Dive Brief:

• Wells Fargo is hiring Bank of New York Mellon CFO Mike Santomassimo to be its next chief financial officer, effective in the fall, the San Francisco-based bank announced Tuesday.

• John Shrewsberry, Wells Fargo's current CFO, will retire after 22 years with the bank, including the past six as CFO. He will stay onboard until Santomassimo joins and will help with the transition, the bank said in a press release.

• Santomassimo is hardly the first executive to leave BNY Mellon for the nation's fourth-largest bank. Wells Fargo CEO Charlie Scharf made the same transition last October.

Dive Insight:

Santomassimo will arrive at Wells Fargo as the bank focuses on cost cutting. The bank last week reported its first quarterly loss since 2008, a revelation that prompted Scharf to announce he wanted to trim expenses by $10 billion, beginning this year. 

"There’s no reason why, as a management team, we don’t have the ability to be as efficient as the rest," Scharf said last week, adding that the bank has too many management layers. The bank is said to be drafting plans to cut tens of thousands of jobs.

"There will come a time, and I assume at some point this year, when we get back to executing on programs that are in place and some that are still under development that are designed to get our total expense base, which for us means our total headcount, to as lean a state as we can reasonably operate," Shrewsberry said at a virtual conference in June.

Scharf said in January the bank may take "much of this year" to conduct reviews of the budget and broader business. 

Santomassimo has served as CFO of BNY Mellon since 2018, meaning his tenure there coincided at least in part with Scharf's two-year stint as the bank's CEO. Santomassimo is at least the sixth former colleague or direct report Scharf has hired since taking the top role at Wells, according to American Banker.

As CFO at BNY Mellon, Santomassimo was responsible for, among other things, regulatory relations — which positions him as a potential point person for the 12 public enforcement actions Wells had against it as of January. Some, including a $1.95 trillion asset cap imposed by the Federal Reserve, stemmed from the bank's well-publicized 2016 fake-accounts scandal.

Santomassimo also served as CFO for BNY Mellon's Investment Services businesses. Prior to joining the New York-based investment bank, he spent 11 years at JPMorgan Chase, where he again worked with Scharf, who was CEO of retail finance services from 2004 to 2012.

Emily Portney, a former executive in BNY Mellon's asset servicing division, will step in as CFO. She also served as CFO of Barclays International, and spent 22 years in various leadership roles at JPMorgan Chase.

In Tuesday's release, Scharf lauded Shrewsberry for playing a "significant role in executing numerous financial and operational initiatives, while maintaining the company’s strong capital and liquidity positions."

"He is well-respected throughout the company, and the financial community, for his strategic insight, as well as for his commitment and passion for building strong, personal relationships, and we are grateful for his many years of service to the company," Scharf said of Shrewsberry.

"The past 22 years have been rewarding thanks to the talented people I have worked with and the work we have led," Shrewsberry said. "I have every confidence in the Enterprise Finance team to continue the good work we've begun."

Representatives for Wells Fargo and for Santomassimo declined requests for comment.