Wells Fargo Is Now Nation's Biggest Bank By Market Value

The L.A. Times reports:

If you want to do business with the biggest bank in the Western world, don't get on a plane to New York or London. The new place to go is sunny California.

Wells Fargo & Co., with its headquarters in downtown San Francisco, has shot ahead of the East Coast institutions that have long been the behemoths of the financial industry, including JPMorgan Chase & Co. andCitigroup Inc.

Although Wells Fargo still has fewer bank deposits than its closest competitor, its total stock market value is now about $178 billion — that's about $70 billion more than Citigroup and about $9 billion more than JPMorgan. It has even overtaken the largest bank in Europe, London's HSBC.

This newly assumed title is not just a quirk of the stock markets. It symbolizes an important shift that has taken place over the last year: Investors and bankers have increasingly lost faith in the old Wall Street model that helped New York consolidate its status as the financial capital of the world.

An article well worth your time.