Philip fradkin was lucky with the raw material for his book "Stagecoach". Many corporate historians have to make do with dry balance sheets and dusty boardroom minutes. His subject, Wells Fargo, was founded as an express-delivery company and bank in 1852, during the California gold rush. By the time the two businesses were split half a century later, there had been gunfights with outlaws and Indians, run-ins with railwaymen and the United States Post Office, not to mention frequent embezzlement and occa- sional hangings. Wells Fargo was even represented at the OK Corral: Morgan and Wyatt Earp were company messengers. Although the stagecoach remains its logo, the modern Wells Fargo, America's fourth-largest bank, is only an indirect descendant of its romantic predecessor. The express business, crippled by railways and regulation, was nationalised in 1918. The old bank bumbled along unremarkably for most of the 20th century, but ran into deep trouble in the 1990s and was taken over in 1998 by Norwest Bancorp, a Minne- apolis bank. Norwest, knowing a good name when it saw one, took Wells Fargo's.
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