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Wells Fargo & Co. Names Karen Wimbish Head of Retail Retirement Group

Wimbish, current president of Wells Fargo Advisors' Latin America Group, will relocate from St. Louis to Charlotte and report to John Papadopulos, president of Wells Fargo Retirement. As head of Retail Retirement, Wimbish will lead a department of 215 team members, all of whom are focused on increasing Wells Fargo's ability to help retail customers, through multiple channels, plan for and live a comfortable, achievable retirement.

"Karen has more than 30 years of experience in the financial services business and is an expert at managing a business to focus on serving individual customers. For the past five years, she led the brokerage team's Latin America Group and leveraged her management skills with a unique ability to partner across multiple consistencies. This is an important part of her new role, and I am thrilled to have her on the Wells Fargo Retirement leadership team," said Papadopulos.

As head of Retail Retirement, Wimbish will work with Wells Fargo Advisors, Wells Fargo Wealth Management and Wells Fargo's Community Bank to implement strategies that engage more current and prospective customers in retirement planning, products and services.

"I am truly excited about the opportunity to help our broad range of customers achieve their retirement dreams through proactive planning. At Wells Fargo, we have many resources to help customers with retirement, and I look forward to helping customers succeed financially," said Wimbish.

Wimbish began her career at Wells Fargo in 1996 when she joined the predecessor firm Wheat First Securities LLC in Richmond, Va., where she was head of Relationship Management for a division of the firm called Mentor Investment Advisors, which became Evergreen Investments. She then became the division's chief operating officer and later was chief operating officer of the Independent Brokerage Group of Wachovia Securities. In 2001, Wimbish became chief operating officer of Wells Fargo Advisors Financial Network and in 2005 she became president of the Latin America Group.

Before joining Wells Fargo, Wimbish worked at SunTrust Bank in credit administration, retail banking and commercial banking.

Wells Fargo Retirement

Wells Fargo Retirement's purpose is to help Wells Fargo & Company become the pre-eminent provider of retirement planning, advice, products and services for businesses and individuals. The company ranks fourth in IRA assets under management according to Cerulli and is the number one distributor of annuities across the U.S. according to Life Insurance Marketing and Research Associates (LIMRA). Wells Fargo's institutional retirement business, Wells Fargo Institutional Retirement and Trust, ranks seventh in the U.S. for the administration of employer-sponsored retirement plans based on assets according to PlanSponsor's 2009 annual survey and serves 3.5 million participants. Wells Fargo Advisors, the company's retail brokerage division, is the third largest brokerage operation in the U.S. Wells Fargo is the fourth largest financial services firm in the U.S. and serves 70 million banking customers.

About Wells Fargo

Wells Fargo & Company is a diversified financial services company with $1.2 trillion in assets, providing banking, insurance, investments, mortgage, and consumer and commercial finance through more than 10,000 stores and 12,000 ATMs and the Internet (wellsfargo.com and wachovia.com) across North America and internationally.

Wells Fargo & Company
Amy H. Jones, 704-383-4995
Leslie Ingberg, 612-667-0265