At the outset there was a great footprint, a lot of good people, a seemingly strong set of businesses, solid client loyalty and an opportunity in the banking landscape.
What will the business school case studies say went wrong?
11 replies (most recent on top)
I suspect both banks brought much weaker tech platforms than either knew to the merger. Those fundamental weaknesses worked as a reverse multiplier when the company went forward. Instead of a bounce, the merger produced an even bigger tech hole and there were no real
ops folks at the top who could help turn it around.
In 2026, the sales and product side of the business is pretty easy, the ops part is everything and if you have weak ops and weak tech you get weak outcomes.
@c4 exactly, a lot of us knew from the beginning it was going to end badly. Nothing will convince me that the merger was about a legacy of the “heritage” banks CEOs to oversee the largest merger. Two id--ts got together, ruined what was once a pretty great place to work and an other pretty ok one.
@ez unionize! 100% agree
Truist aimed to be different and then chose to relocate hq to the fin-bro capital of the world where there is zero creativity and no diversity in thought leadership. Truist would have done better to keep hq in Atlanta or Winston. The “abundant” “banking talent” that Charlotte had to offer ruined the place.
You know what is destroyed is “Employee Morale”. I understand there will be RIF’s post merger, but we are 6 years post merger and the pink slips are still flying like nobody’s business. How do you retain good people when there are RIF’s every month?
Add Bank of America mo--ns
Hate to comment on looks, but the Wells reject running it is too darn ugly to be in that role, looks like she is missing a chromosome.
Bank mergers make little sense. Especially when it puts you in a higher strata of regulations. Mergers are supposed to cut costs but when the amount of wealth increases puts you over a means you are under more stringent regulations it costs more. ( https://www.fdic.gov/news/press-releases/2025/agencies-release-annual-asset-size-thresholds-under-community-reinvestment )
That's the "original sin" of the merger. Senior management (don't call them leaders, they aren't) then had to find some other way to cut costs and they aren't very creative so RIFs here, RIFs there.
Now we've got Wells Fargo D-Team flunkies coming in and thinking they are hot sh-t and can save everything. They aren't any more creative.
Give it two years and the entire revolving door of senior managers will spin enough that it all looks different but we'll be in the same situation, having to do more with less people and now with less institutional knowledge because everyone that knows how to do anything is gone.
The entire reason for the "nearshoring" of the GCC is to get around the $100,000 fee for H1B's which was removed so now that doesn't make sense anymore.
So basically engineers have a choice, either stick around and try to save the bank from the Good-Idea-Fairy encircled senior managers or abandon the sinking ship for elsewhere.
Or we could just unionize...
"Leadership"
The footprint of both banks was essentially the same. Same pie sliced differently.
The company has been outfitted with Wells Fargo Rejects.
They are doing to Truist what they would have done to WF.