Who will be Wells Fargo's next CEO?

Given the scale of Wells Fargo’s challenges, there would be obvious benefits to hiring a CEO with experience in a leadership role at a similarly sized bank.

Much of the early speculation about Wells Fargo’s search has focused on executives from JPMorgan Chase. The $2.6 trillion-asset bank has a deep bench, said Brian Kleinhanzl, an analyst at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods. “They are held in a good light by regulators,” he added.

Potential candidates in this category could include Marianne Lake (pictured), JPMorgan’s chief financial officer, and Gordon Smith, co-president and chief operating officer. Both are seen as possible successors to CEO Jamie Dimon.

Another name to consider is Matt Zames, the former chief operating officer at JPMorgan, who left the bank in 2017 and is currently president of Cerberus Capital Management.

Experience as a chief executive figures to be an asset, even if it came at a smaller firm than San Francisco-based Wells.

“The core of what Wells Fargo is,” argued Christopher Wolfe, managing director for North American banks at Fitch Ratings, “is a very, very large regional bank.”

Many regional bank CEOs have experience in cutting costs, which figures to be a key priority for Wells. The $1.9 trillion-asset bank said last fall that it expects its employee headcount to decline by about 5% to 10% within the next three years.

On Monday, analysts at KBW downgraded shares in Wells Fargo in a research note titled “It’s tough to sail a ship without a captain.” They reasoned that the company’s projected cost savings will likely not materialize fully after Sloan’s departure.

Some observers have suggested that former U.S. Bancorp CEO Richard Davis, above, could be a strong candidate for the Wells job, if he is interested in the position. Davis was just 58 when he retired in 2017. He was named CEO of Make-A-Wish America, a nonprofit organization, in October.

Another observer suggested that the merger of "two large Southeast regional banks" — the source did not mention BB&T and SunTrust Banks by name — could also free up some potentially strong candidates.

Given its need to repair its relations with regulators, Wells Fargo could turn to an ex-regulator or D.C. insider to fill the CEO job.

Wells is regulated by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, so it could turn to former comptrollers who have since entered the private sector. Thomas Curry stepped down as comptroller in 2017 before becoming a partner at Nutter McClennen & Fish LLP. John Dugan, above, who chairs the board of Citigroup, advised large banks as a private attorney before serving as comptroller in the George W. Bush administration from 2005 to 2010. He also previously held senior positions at the Treasury Department and as a Capitol Hill staffer.

Another crisis-era regulator that Wells Fargo could consider to help the banks navigate through its various government orders is Sheila Bair, the former chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Bair, a Republican, won high marks from Democrats for her tough approach in the crisis, but she also at times butted heads with some in the industry.

Robert Steel, the undersecretary of Treasury for Domestic Finance from 2006 to 2008, would have the advantage of having already been a CEO at a large troubled bank. He was named chief executive of Wachovia in July 2008 to try to right the institution, which was suffering mortgage-related losses at the time, and eventually approved the bank’s sale to Wells Fargo later that year.

A number of former regulators have already played pivotal roles representing or advising large institutions in Congress. Julie Williams was a longtime chief counsel at the OCC (where she twice served as acting comptroller) before joining the consulting firm Promontory Financial Group, where she holds the title of managing director.

Greg Baer is the head of the Bank Policy Institute, a Washington-based trade organization representing several of the largest financial institutions, including Wells. He has held senior jobs at Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase. He previously served in the government at the Treasury and the Federal Reserve.

Then there's Betsy Duke, Wells Fargo's own board chair. The board has said it will only consider external candidates, but if it reverses course and eyes one of its own, Duke would bring not only executive experience — she was the CEO of a Virginia community bank, Bank of Tidewater, until it was acquired in 2001 — but an intimate knowledge of how Washington works. She was a member of the Federal Reserve's board of governors from 2008 to 2013.