A Wells Fargo executive was one of at least eight people killed on May 12 in a deadly crash when an Amtrak train traveling between Washington, D.C., and New York City derailed in Philadelphia. Abid Gilani, a 55, a senior vice president in the company, was traveling with his Toronto-based mother on the Northeast Regional Train 188, after attending his uncle’s funeral in Virginia. “His mother was in town from Toronto for the funeral of her brother and now has to bury her son,” one of Gilani’s cousins told the New York Daily News.
Based in New York City, Gilani had worked for Wells Fargo for about a year in the banks’ hospitality finance group after nearly eight years with hotel giant Marriott International. Originally from Canada, Gilani split his time between Washington and New York for work. This month marked the one-year anniversary of Gilani’s arrival at Wells Fargo.
“It is with great sadness that Wells Fargo confirms that Abid Gilani, a valued member of our Commercial Real Estate division, has passed away,” Communications Manager Elise Wilkinson said.
The married father of two had recently relocated with his family to Walnut Creek, California from Maryland while his kids went to college on the West Coast. Gilani had to commute across the country each week to work in Manhattan and returned home each weekend to California to be with his wife, the New York Daily News reported.
Gilani’s wife Diane Gilani told Washington’s WUSA9 that she started making her way to Philadelphia even before learning of his death when she couldn’t get a hold of him. But before she reached the city, she received a call asking her to help identify his body. Talking to reporters in Rockville, Maryland, she described her husband as a “dear person” and “a kind family man.”
“We have suffered a tremendous loss today,” Diane Gilani said. “He’ll be sorely missed … he was really a wonderful person,” she said. Diane Gilani said she and her husband — both from Canada — moved to the United States “decades ago” but still have family ties in Ontario
According to Gilani’s LinkedIn profile, he has had a long career in finance. Prior to joining Wells Fargo, Gilani was at hotel chain Marriott International for six years, as the senior vice president of mortgage banking and the CFO of the Europe branch. Before that, he spent more than nine years at Scotia Capital in San Francisco and almost another nine years at Scotiabank in Canada. According to his LinkedIn profile, Gilani attended Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ont., and the University of Saskatchewan before working as a mine planning engineer in Saskatoon. He also worked for ScotiaBank and RBC Dominion Securities.
An Associated Press employee, a midshipman at the U.S. Naval Academy, the CEO of an educational startup and an official with a New York college were also among the dead. At least 10 people remained hospitalized in critical condition. Federal investigators said May 13 that the train was travelling at about 105 miles an hour before it ran off the rails along a sharp curve where the speed limit drops to about 50 miles an hour, Daily News reported.
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