Brief: Wells Fargo plans to sell 2.5 million shares

Thursday, Oct. 8, 1998 | 2:24 a.m.

In the SEC filing, Wells said the stock offering was necessary for the merger to qualify as a pooling of interests, in which the two companies' balance sheets are simply combined item by item.

Companies prefer pooling so that they can avoid a writedown for goodwill and report higher future profits.

In June, Wells agreed to be acquired by Norwest Corp. for $31.4 billion, creating the nation's seventh-largest bank with $191 billion in assets, more than 90,000 employees, 20 million customers and 2,860 bank branches in the West and Midwest. The merged bank will be named Wells Fargo and will be based in San Francisco, where Wells is based.

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