The Wells Fargo-First Interstate Merger : ON HIS OWN : Don’t Cry for Siart--He’s Likely to Land on His Feet

The Wells Fargo wagon is coming down the street, but William E.B. Siart won’t be hopping aboard.

At a news conference Wednesday detailing the $11.6-billion merger agreement between Wells Fargo & Co. and First Interstate Bancorp, Siart said he will stay only to see his banking company through the rigors of the merger process. Then he will leave.

Siart, who took over the jobs of chief executive and chairman last year but who has worked for First Interstate since 1978, said there are plenty of opportunities for him in the banking industry, although he declined to specify any.

Industry watchers said an executive of Siart’s abilities and reputation for running an interstate network would have his pick of jobs nationwide in the banking industry, which is continually creating new multistate operations through mergers.

Roger Miller, a partner in the Pasadena executive search firm of Ryan Miller & Associates, which specializes in the banking industry, said Siart probably has several possibilities already lined up. His opportunities would lie not only in banking, but also in investment, venture capital or consulting firms, Miller said.

“For a guy like him, certainly a lot of people have to credit him with turning the ship around over the last few years and pulling the interstate network together, and certainly getting more out of it,” Miller said.

“The problem he has is that he is at a very senior level. With all these mergers that take place, you have two No. 1 guys, and after the merger, it’s one No. 1 guy and one unemployed No. 1 guy. He can join the ranks of the unemployed No. 1 guys.

“But I don’t think anybody is going to shed any tears for him,” Miller said. “These guys tend to land on their feet.”

And with the previously disclosed $4.57-million severance package Siart would receive, “he can clip coupons for a while,” Miller quipped.

Thomas Brown, an analyst for Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette in New York, speculated that if Siart had cut a deal to stay on at Wells after the merger, he would have found himself in a position similar to that of Robert H. Smith, the former Security Pacific Corp. chairman who stayed aboard briefly after his company was swallowed by BankAmerica Corp. in 1992.

“They put you in a nice office and give you a title,” Brown said, “but you look around and there’s nobody reporting to you.”

Siart, who turned 49 on Christmas, is a native of Los Angeles who began his banking career in 1969 in the corporate finance department of Bank of America. He joined First Interstate in 1978 as vice president in the chairman’s office. In 1990, Siart was named president of First Interstate Bancorp.

Times staff writer Thomas S. Mulligan contributed to this report.