Wells Fargo Adds 350 Million Shares to Buyback Authorization

Wells Fargo & Co. said its board approved the repurchase of an additional 350 million shares of the San Francisco-based bank's stock.

At Tuesday's close of $48.26 a share, the new allotment is worth $16.89 billion.

The lender, which recently had 5.1 billion shares outstanding, said the board also held its dividend steady at 37.5 cents a share.

The company recently had a market capitalization of $242.69 billion, according to FactSet.

Wells Fargo recently reported its fourth-quarter profit was flat compared with the year-ago period, but revenue grew as the bank increased its assets 6%.

The San Francisco lender, the largest U.S. bank by market value, continued to wrestle with a slump in oil prices. But growth in other assets—partly due to acquisitions from General Electric Co.'s finance arm—pushed Wells Fargo's t otal balance sheet past Citigroup Inc.'s to make it the third-largest in the U.S. at the end of 2015, behind J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Bank of America Corp.

Write to Tess Stynes at [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 26, 2016 17:35 ET (22:35 GMT)

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