Wells Fargo appoints JPMorgan veteran as vice chairman

Wells Fargo & Co. appointed Doug Braunstein, a previous finance chief at JPMorgan Chase & Co., as its new vice chairman, a post former US envoy to Israel Tom Nides vacated after a weeks-long stint.

Braunstein joins Wednesday and will report to Chief Executive Charlie Scharf, the bank said in a statement. In his new role, he’ll help expand the bank’s corporate finance and advisory businesses and advise senior management on broader business issues.

“Doug is a world-class banker, and he will work alongside the great team we have assembled in corporate and investment banking to continue growing it,” Scharf said in the statement. “The addition of Doug’s expertise and business relationships reflects our continued commitment to strengthen CIB even further.”

Braunstein was an executive at JPMorgan during the financial crisis, when the company emerged relatively unscathed, bought rival Bear Stearns Cos. and grew into the biggest US bank. He held the post of chief financial officer during the bank’s London Whale debacle — when a trader known as the London Whale lost at least $6.2 billion for JPMorgan in 2012. Braunstein relinquished the CFO position and became vice chairman after Chief Executive Jamie Dimon shuffled top management in the wake of the bad trades.

Under Scharf, Wells Fargo has been seeking to grow into a more formidable Wall Street player to better compete with the likes of JPMorgan and Bank of America Corp. Braunstein spent nearly two decades at JPMorgan and at one time overlapped with Scharf. While there, Braunstein’s other roles included head of Americas investment banking, head of global M&A, and global head of industry coverage.

In September, Wells Fargo said Nides, one of Wall Street and Washington’s most connected executives, would join as vice chairman in October — a major hire for the bank as it continues to work its way past a series of missteps. But weeks into his job, the bank announced that Nides was leaving to focus on the Middle East, which kicked off a search for a permanent replacement. In late January, Blackstone Inc. said it had hired Nides.