From lumber trader to CEO: Wells Fargo AM chief on 30 years in finance

PROFILE

Mike Niedermeyer started his career at US bank Wells Fargo back in the 1980s and has since risen to the position of CEO of its asset management business. However, his career started in a very different place and has become a talking point for his fellow staff members at the firm.

“I once told a colleague about my early years as a lumber trader, and since then it is all people latch onto,” he said. Despite leaving university with an MBA, Niedermeyer got “distracted” into the family lumber-trading business which, like Wells Fargo, can trace its history back to the stage coach days. Wells Fargo once owned and operated the largest stage coach empire in the world. Niedermeyer said: “Lumber trading was all speculative. You would put the lumber on a train on a slow route, so that it would take 30 days to get to the East Coast. Then you would try to sell that lumber t...