Wells Fargo CEO talks of next steps with Wachovia

A week after closing on its acquisition of Wachovia, San Francisco's Wells Fargo & Co. faces a long to-do list as it figures out how to make the most of its new purchase.

Wells has already announced leaders from both sides for the combined company, folded four Wachovia directors into its now 20-member board, and told customers of both companies that they can use either bank's ATMs.

In a phone interview Wednesday, Wells CEO John Stumpf discussed what's ahead. Here is an edited version of his remarks.

ON JOB CUTS: There will be duplicative jobs and there will be job loss -- I know that. How many that will be, I do not know. I'm a big pro-jobs person, and the more customers we have, the more jobs we need. We've done a couple of things to make the job loss as small as it possibly can be: We have a hiring freeze on at both companies. We're putting postings up for open jobs. Just because a position is eliminated does not necessarily mean a job is lost.

ON THE SKYSCRAPER WACHOVIA IS BUILDING IN CHARLOTTE: We know that is an important project for the city of Charlotte. The amount of space we use in the tower will depend on our business plans, and we're developing those right now. We've said that Charlotte will be our Eastern headquarters, and our new company will have over 90 businesses.

ON THE $25 BILLION WELLS GOT FROM THE TROUBLED ASSET RELIEF PROGRAM: We don't segregate the TARP money from other capital that we have. Just like we raised $12.6 billion in capital recently, and we raised money over the past year and so forth -- it all helps support the business.

ON WHETHER HE'LL TAKE A BONUS FOR 2008: Our board makes the decisions on bonuses, and our [rules] say in very plain language that for the named executive officers -- those are the top six in the company -- that the board can't even consider a bonus for us unless we make at least a 15 percent return on equity or make the same earnings per share that we've made in the previous year. So this is really the purview of the board.

ON THE CONVERSION: We'll change systems and signs and so forth as it makes sense for customers and for our team members. So when the signs change, that could take some time. ... My suspicion is we will convert the overlapping markets earlier than the stand-alone markets.