A flood of deposits from customers anxious to move away from struggling rivals helped Wells Fargo deliver better than expected third-quarter earnings of $1.64bn on Wednesday.

Earnings per share at Wells, which expects to close on a $14bn (€10.3bn, £8bn) acquisition of Wachovia in the fourth quarter, were $0.49, about 25 per cent lower than the same quarter last year. However, this was more than the 34 cents analysts had been expecting, and came despite Wells incurring $646m of previously announced writedowns on securities issued by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Lehman Brothers, and $2.5bn of loan losses and provisions.