Wells Fargo & Co.’s global-markets business is expanding into options clearing, a capital intensive and operationally arduous corner of finance dominated by Bank of America Corp. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
The fourth-largest US lender has been striving to build a larger presence on Wall Street, and a major roadblock was removed in June, when the bank was released from a regulatory punishment that had banned it from expanding its assets beyond its 2017 level of $1.95 trillion. The markets business had felt the impact most, squeezed by limits on the capital and balance sheet it could commit.