Wells Fargo is owned by its public shareholders. Wells Fargo & Company is a Delaware corporation and bank holding company whose common stock trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol WFC, according to its 2025 Form 10-K. No single person, family, or parent company controls it. The company's 2026 proxy statement lists only three holders above 5% of the common stock: The Vanguard Group at 10.43%, BlackRock at 8.61%, and FMR LLC (Fidelity) at 6.40%.
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Much of what ranks for this question is out of date. Older coverage frames Wells Fargo as a Warren Buffett bank, which stopped being true years ago. Berkshire Hathaway's own quarterly Form 13F filings show its stake falling from hundreds of millions of shares in 2020 to zero by the end of March 2022. This article uses only SEC filings for ownership figures, then explains how the holding company, its national bank subsidiary, and its outside stakes, such as its co-ownership of the Zelle operator, fit together.
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Wells Fargo is a widely held public company. Its largest owners are asset managers that buy shares on behalf of index funds, mutual funds, and clients, led by Vanguard, BlackRock, and Fidelity's parent FMR. No shareholder holds a controlling stake, and directors and executives together own well under one percent of the stock.
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The 2026 proxy statement's "Principal Shareholders" table is the authoritative source. It lists every person or group Wells Fargo knows of that beneficially owns more than 5% of its common stock as of February 9, 2026. Three names appear, and each figure comes from a Schedule 13G or 13G/A the holder filed with the SEC.
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Two details in those footnotes matter. First, the dates. Holders refile a 13G only when their position changes enough to require it, so the proxy's figures reflect positions from late 2023 and late 2024, not a live count. Second, owning shares is not the same as voting them. Per the proxy footnotes, Vanguard reported sole voting power over none of its shares and shared voting power over 4,313,986. BlackRock reported sole voting power over 241,650,232 shares. FMR reported sole voting power over 156,268,809 shares.
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Beyond the big three, ownership is broad. The 10-K reports 155,031 holders of record at February 13, 2026. That count understates the true number of owners, because most individual investors hold shares through a broker in "street name," and the broker's nominee is the record holder.
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Insiders own a very small slice of Wells Fargo. The company's directors, director nominees, and executive officers each hold far less than one percent of the stock, individually and as a group. Management runs the company, but shareholders, dominated by institutional investors, own it and elect the board that oversees management.
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The 2026 proxy states directly that none of the directors, named executive officers, or executive officers, individually or as a group, beneficially own more than 1% of the outstanding common stock as of February 9, 2026. The same table shows Charles W. Scharf, the Chairman and CEO, holding 1,056,234 shares in joint accounts plus 103 shares in a trust. Against 3,074,934,266 shares outstanding on the March 2, 2026 record date, also from the proxy, that is a tiny fraction.
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Several independent directors hold only token direct positions. Fabian T. Garcia and Wayne M. Hewett each show 101 shares owned outright, with most of their exposure in deferred stock units credited under the directors' compensation plan, per the beneficial ownership table. This is common at large banks. Directors are paid partly in stock units that convert to shares later, so the "owned" column looks small.
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Voting at Wells Fargo is one share, one vote. There is a single class of voting common stock, no founder super-voting shares, and no cumulative voting. Shareholders elect all directors each year, so control rests with whoever holds or votes the most shares, which in practice means large asset managers and their proxy voting policies. Source: Wells Fargo's 2026 proxy statement.
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The proxy spells it out: each share outstanding on the record date carries one vote on each of the 12 director nominees and each other item, and "there is no cumulative voting." That design differs from companies such as Alphabet or Meta, where founders hold high-vote share classes. At Wells Fargo, a 10% holder has roughly 10% of the vote, subject to how it exercises that power.
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Board leadership also changed recently. The lead independent director's letter in the 2026 proxy says the independent directors appointed Scharf as Chairman in 2025 and named a Lead Independent Director alongside him. The same filing reports that after the 2025 annual meeting the company contacted holders of 61% of outstanding shares and engaged with holders of 59%, a sign of how concentrated the voting base is among institutions.
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Wells Fargo also has preferred stock outstanding, such as its 7.50% Series L convertible preferred referenced in the proxy. Preferred holders have a senior claim on dividends but do not elect directors in the ordinary course, so they are investors rather than owners in the control sense.
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No. Berkshire Hathaway, the company Warren Buffett runs, was once one of Wells Fargo's largest shareholders, but it sold down through 2020 and 2021 and reported no Wells Fargo shares as of March 31, 2022. Articles describing Wells Fargo as a Buffett-owned bank reflect a position that no longer exists.
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Berkshire's quarterly Form 13F reports, filed with the SEC, trace the exit. Figures below are Wells Fargo common shares reported across Berkshire's 13F information table for each quarter.
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The drop from more than 323 million shares to about 52 million during 2020 accounts for most of the sale, and the last small position disappeared in early 2022. That is why Berkshire is absent from the 5% table in the 2026 proxy. Any percentage for Berkshire's stake that appears in a search summary without a filing behind it should be treated as unreliable. 13F filings report share counts, not ownership percentages, and quoted percentages depend on which quarter's share count is used as the denominator. Source: Berkshire Hathaway's Q1 2020 13F filing.
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Wells Fargo has two layers. Wells Fargo & Company is the publicly traded parent, a financial holding company that shareholders own. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. is its principal national bank subsidiary, owned by the parent, and it holds most customer deposits and loans. Shareholders own the bank only indirectly, through the parent.
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The 2025 10-K describes the parent as registered under the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956, with its principal business being to act as a holding company for its subsidiaries. It became a financial holding company effective March 13, 2000, which lets it own securities and insurance businesses as well as banks. At December 31, 2025, the consolidated company reported about $2.1 trillion in assets, $1.4 trillion in deposits, and $181.1 billion in stockholders' equity, and it ranked as the fourth largest US bank holding company by assets, per the same 10-K.
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The bank subsidiary dominates that balance sheet. The 10-K reports Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. held $1.8 trillion of assets at year-end 2025, or 85% of the company's total. The "N.A." stands for National Association, meaning the bank holds a federal charter.
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The two layers answer to different regulators. The parent is supervised by the Federal Reserve Board as a bank holding company and, because its stock is listed, by the SEC and the NYSE. The national bank subsidiaries are regulated and examined primarily by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and also by the FDIC, the Fed, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, according to the 10-K.
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This split also explains how regulatory actions land. The Federal Reserve's February 2, 2018 consent order was imposed on the parent company and included a limit on growth in total assets. The 10-K says the company confirmed on June 3, 2025 that the Fed had removed that asset cap. By contrast, the September 12, 2024 anti-money laundering agreement was between Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. and the OCC, per the same filing. The lead independent director's letter in the 2026 proxy describes 2025 as the year the company saw its outstanding consent orders terminated and the asset cap lifted.
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Anyone researching the 1852 stagecoach and express company should note that it is a different legal entity. Today's Wells Fargo & Company carries the brand, but the SEC registrant filing under the name is the Delaware corporation headquartered at 333 Market Street, San Francisco, per the 10-K cover page.
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Wells Fargo also owns stakes in shared financial infrastructure. The best known is Early Warning Services, the company that operates the Zelle payment network, which Wells Fargo co-owns with six other large US banks. Stakes like this give big banks joint control over payment rails their customers use every day.
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Early Warning is based in Scottsdale, Arizona. When the CFPB sued it along with three of its owner banks on December 20, 2024, Payments Dive reported the named defendants were Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo, and that the company is also owned by Capital One, PNC Bank, Truist, and U.S. Bank. The CFPB later dropped the case, as its archived release notes. For how the consortium and its products work, see what Early Warning Services is and how it runs Zelle.
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This kind of consortium ownership is a recurring pattern in US banking. Large banks often build shared utilities together rather than compete on every rail, and the same group of institutions shows up again in newer efforts such as bank-issued digital dollar projects and bank partner networks for tokenized deposits.
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The reliable way to check who owns Wells Fargo is to read SEC filings directly. The annual proxy statement lists 5% holders and insider stakes, the 10-K gives share and holder counts, and Schedule 13G and Form 13F filings show changes by individual investors between proxies.

Two cautions apply. Percentages in 13G filings use the share count at the time of filing, and Wells Fargo has been shrinking its share base; the lead director's letter in the proxy cites a 26% reduction in average common shares outstanding under current management. So an unchanged share count can mean a rising percentage. Also, market data sites often blend 13F data from different quarters, which is how conflicting figures spread. The same approach applies to other financial firms, including private ones such as Chime before and after its listing.
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This article draws ownership figures only from primary SEC filings retrieved from EDGAR in September 2026. Current holders and insider stakes come from the Wells Fargo DEF 14A filed March 18, 2026. Corporate structure, assets, and regulatory history come from the Form 10-K for fiscal 2025, filed February 24, 2026. Berkshire's historical positions come from its 13F-HR filings.
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Primary filings: Wells Fargo 2026 Proxy Statement; Wells Fargo 2025 Form 10-K; Berkshire Hathaway 13F-HR filings for Q1 2020, Q4 2020, Q4 2021, and Q1 2022. Holdings change continuously, and the proxy's 5% figures reflect the 13G filings each holder last made.
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