PASADENA, Calif. – As the chairman, president, and CEO of Wells Fargo & Co., Richard Kovacevich has earned a reputation for outspokenness and an inclusive, common-sense management style. Kovacevich will now bring those qualities to the California Institute of Technology as the newest member of the Institute's Board of Trustees.
Kovacevich became president and CEO of Wells Fargo following the bank's 1998 merger with the Norwest Corporation. Prior to the merger, Kovacevich was named Norwest's chief executive officer in 1993 and chairman in 1995, after serving as president and CEO since 1989. He had been with the company since 1986.
According to several financial magazines, under his leadership San Francisco-based Wells Fargo has thrived. In 2002, the bank was ranked by Fortune magazine as one of the nation's most admired companies; previously, it called Kovacevich one of the nation's most innovative consumer bankers. And Global Finance magazine ranked Wells Fargo the best and safest bank in the United States for the second consecutive year.
Wells Fargo's first office opened on the waterfront of Gold Rush San Francisco on July 13, 1852, the site of the company's current headquarters. Today it is a $349 billion corporation that has evolved its business, as Kovacevich has stated, "from stagecoaches that went five miles an hour to Internet banking that's done at 30,000 miles per second."
The San Francisco resident is a board member of that city's Committee on Jobs; a member of the board of governors of its symphony; and a trustee of the Museum of Modern Art. In addition, he serves as vice chairman of the American Bankers Council and is a board member of Cargill, Inc., and of Target Corporation.
Although he holds bachelor's and master degrees in industrial engineering, and a master's of business administration degree, all from Stanford University, he is pleased to serve as a part of Caltech's governing body.
"I have admired Caltech as a preeminent education institution for science and engineering since my own college days as an engineer," says Kovacevich. "It is a distinct honor for me to serve as a trustee of this great institution of higher learning."