Wells Fargo's investment bank hired the man who orchestrated cost-cutting at Standard Chartered & Credit Suisse

People can change. Past behaviour is not always an indicator of the future. Just because someone spent their past two jobs devoted to cutting billions from costs at their past two banks, doesn't mean they'll do the same at their new employer.

Even so, people at Wells Fargo's investment bank may have reason to look askance at Warren Young, the new chief operating officer of the corporate and investment bank, if happen upon him in New York City.

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Young has just joined Wells Fargo, fresh from Standard Chartered in Singapore. At Standard Chartered, he ran the 'Fit for Growth' transformation programme, which involved 300 initiatives to simplify, standarise and digitise the bank. The programme had cut run rate costs at the bank by $700m by the end of 2025 (which also costing $700m to implement). The cuts involved cutting jobs in Singapore and offshoring to India. Standard Chartered also plans to cut 7,000 jobs using AI and has already done away with nearly 90% of its monitoring professionals. 

Young rose up of the Credit Suisse CFO's office. At the failed Swiss bank, he was rendered head of investment bank transformation in December 2022. Before that, he dealt with the fallout from the Archegos failure at the Swiss bank, including presumably much of the cost cutting that ensued. In his final job there, Young was supposed to be radically restructuring Credit Suisse's investment bank, cutting costs by 15%, and reducing risk weighted assets. However, he left after 10 months and went to Standard Chartered instead.

Now, Young is at Wells Fargo. Will he be cutting costs there too? Wells Fargo didn't respond to a request to comment. However, in announcing his arrival, the bank said Young will be helping to "drive operational performance" and "modernization" of its platform. These might be euphemisms for something, and it's probably not adding expensive additional talent. 

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