Wells Fargo & Co‘s (NYSE: WFC) business unit which contains wealth management, its brokerage and retirement units reported a net income of $282 million for the first quarter, a 60% increase from the first quarter of 2009.
The three business units, known as the “WBR” group, had a total of $2.9 billion for the first quarter, up 10% from the fourth quarter and up 16% compared to Q1 2009. Wells Fargo said that the growth in the units were driven by asset-based fees and brokerage transactional activity.
The three units have roughly $1.25 trillion worth of client assets, an increase of about 20% a year ago. Comparatively, Bank of America has $2.18 trillion in its wealth management group and Morgan Stanley has about $1.6 trillion worth of client assets.
Much of Wells Fargo’s client assets in the unit comes from the purchase of Wachovia Securities at the end of 2008. Wells Fargo Advisors consists largely of legacy Wachovia Security advisers. Although the company initially lost many of Wachovia’s advisers, the company has gained 160 net new advisers during the first quarter totaling 15,119.
