Spencer Eccles

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Spencer Fox Eccles (born August 23, 1934, Ogden, Utah) is a prominent financier and philanthropist in Salt Lake City, Utah and chairman emeritus of the Intermountain Region of Wells Fargo Corporation. From 1982 to 2000 he was chairman and chief executive officer of First Security Corporation of Salt Lake City, which was, until its sale to Wells Fargo in 2000, the largest banking organization in the Mountain West measured by assets, deposits and market capitalization.^[1]

Eccles is the son of Spencer Stoddard Eccles and Pauline Hope Fox and the grandson of David Eccles, the Utah banker and industrialist.^[2] He earned a bachelor of science in finance in 1956 from the University of Utah, where he was also a member of Beta Theta Pi, and a master of business administration in 1958 from Columbia University School of Business.

The Eccles family is noted for its philanthropy in the West,^[3] and Eccles is actively involved in many of the various Eccles family foundations, including as president of the George S. and Dolores Dore Eccles Foundation, the largest philanthropic foundation in Utah, president of the Eccles Family Foundation, which he founded, and trustee of the Marriner S. Eccles Foundation, Emma Eccles Jones Foundation, and the Nora Eccles Harrison Foundation. Utah news organizations have identified Eccles as one of the handful of most influential people in the state, along with the Mormon prophet, the Governor, and Orrin Hatch, the state's senior senator.^[4]

In addition to his role at First Security, Eccles has also been a director of the Union Pacific Railroad, the National Chamber of Commerce, the ZCMI Corporation, the Anderson Lumber Company, Amalgamated Sugar, and the National Parks Foundation. He was a member of the three person executive committee of the Salt Lake Olympic Organizing Committee and, in recognition of his critical contribution to the 2002 Olympic Games in Salt Lake, was appointed mayor of the Olympic Village during the games and received the Pierre de Coubertin medal from the International Olympic Committee, the Olympic movement's highest honor.