Wells Fargo & Co. chief executive John Stumpf will take on the role of board chairman on Jan. 1, after Dick Kovacevich steps down, the San Francisco bank said Tuesday.

Stumpf and Kovacevich have worked together for more than 20 years. They have double-teamed in leading the bank since the summer of 2007, when Kovacevich stepped down as CEO but stayed on as chairman.

Kovacevich, who will turn 66 next month, has been the more outspoken of the two, and is one of the harshest industry critics of the federal government's handling of the current economic crisis. In March, he famously called the government stress tests “asinine” and declared that Wells didn't need the $25 billion it received from the government's Troubled Asset Relief Program. At a Stanford conference, he decried how lawmakers kept attaching new rules to the TARP money, and said the program had harmed rather than helped the economy.

“Is this America, where you do what your government asks you to do and then retroactively you also have additional conditions put on? I don't know, you tell me,” he said at the conference, to applause.

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