Wells Fargo & Co. has changed up management of its commercial banking operation here and expanded its technology group.
The addition of Paul O’Mara as regional vice president of the South Orange County market topped the changes for the San Francisco-based bank, which restructured its local retail division last week.
O’Mara will be based in Irvine and report to Rob Yraceburu, manager of Wells’ commercial banking division for Southern California.
The bank sees opportunity building business in the commercial, industrial and real estate industries, according to Yraceburu.
O’Mara joined the bank in 2003 and has served in a number of leadership positions, most recently as re-gional sales manager in the Midwest and Pennsylvania, Dela-ware and Eastern Canada divisions. He’s also served as regional vice president for the bank’s central Chicago commercial banking office.
O’Mara will take the place of Dave Ritchie, who held the top commercial banking position for Wells in Orange County and North San Diego.
Ritchie took on duties as regional deal manager for the Western Region real estate specialty group based in Irvine in June. He will continue in that post, working with commercial banking clients on real estate services throughout Southern California, Northern California, the Pacific Northwest and Southwest.
“This leadership structure allows each regional vice president to concentrate on his or her region and give undivided senior executive attention to the companies and team members in that market,” Yraceburu said.
Tech Team Grows
On the technology side, Wells hired Mark Breneman and Brian Weber as senior vice presidents and senior relationship managers.
Breneman, a 20-year banking veteran, was most recently a senior market manager for First Bank here.
From 1997 to 2005, he served in a number of senior relationship management positions at Silicon Valley Bank.
Weber comes to Wells from Newport Beach-based networking chipmaker Mind-speed Technologies Inc., where he was finance director and treasurer for the last two years. He’s also worked as an underwriting principal for Tokyo-based Orix Corp. and did advisory work at Irvine chipmaker Broadcom Corp. and Deloitte & Touche LLP in New York.
Breneman and Weber are based in Irvine and will report to Tim Sandel, senior vice president and regional vice president for Wells’ technology and life sciences division in Southern California.
The bank has made strides in the region’s technology sector, with a 30% increase in lending in the past year, according to Sandel.
“Wells Fargo is investing billions of dollars in technology companies of all sizes and at all stages of development and is building the team to ensure the bank can continue to provide the best financial strategies for companies in light of the fact that access to capital is so critical to the business Wells Fargo serves,” he said.
Wells’ commercial banking arm serves businesses with annual sales from $25 million to $750 million.
The changes in that division come amid a shift in the bank’s retail operations.
L.A., OC Markets
Earlier this month, the Business Journal reported Wells is combining its Los Angeles and Orange County markets as part of a cost-cutting program.
The plan called for Rob Myers to step down as president of the Orange County market after a year in the job.
Regional President John Sotoodeh will lead the combined market from Los Angeles. It will include 366 branches and nearly 6,100 employees in retail banking.
Orange County residents Ben Alvarado and Keith Kobata will oversee the county, splitting leadership duties for the area’s 100-plus branches here and reporting to Sotoodeh.
Those changes only affected retail banking in the Orange County market, which has some 1,700 employees in more than 100 locations.
Wells Fargo is the county’s No. 2 bank with $15.8 billion in local deposits through June, up 6.6% from a year earlier, according to data from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
Charlotte-based Bank of America Corp. is the market leader with $16.2 billion in local deposits.
