Long before he took over the reins at Wells Fargo, John Stumpf worked as what Americans call a “repo man”. When borrowers at First Bank in St Paul, Minnesota, fell behind on their loan payments in the 1970s, he was the sturdy young fellow who would seek them out and repossess their collateral — cars, televisions and the like.
It was an inauspicious start for a future captain of his industry. St Paul is the smaller of Minnesota’s Twin Cities — the other being Minneapolis — and sits more than 1,000 miles away from Wall Street. Mr Stumpf, 63, was an outsider even in that context — a country boy who grew up as one of 11 children on a Minnesota farm where he shared a bed with two of his brothers.
“I never got to sleep alone until I got married,” he likes to say.