Martin Davis

When Wells Fargo & Co. and Wachovia Corp. merged at the end of 2008, top executives at the new $1.4 trillion-in-assets company took pride not only in completing the biggest-ever banking combination, but also in avoiding a strict timeline for integrating their systems.

“We weren’t going to be calendar-driven,” says Martin Davis, the former Wachovia chief information officer who was tapped to head the new behemoth’s technology integration office. “It was going to be at a pace that was right for our customer base.”

Wells and its many premerger predecessor companies, including Wachovia, had built up competencies in systems integrations — and learned hard lessons from some that were too hastily and sloppily executed. That’s not to say that Davis and his team of about 100 aren’t hustling. They have “accomplished a significant number of integrations” and expect to finish the job in 2011, which was the general commitment, says Davis, 47, an executive vice president who entered Wachovia’s technology group 25 years ago as a programmer with a business degree from Winston-Salem State University in North Carolina. When it’s all done, the entire bank will be on common systems, while other acquisitive competitors struggle to build bridges between incompatible technologies.

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