Wells Fargo Claws Back $15M Bonus From Ex-CEO
The news comes just a few weeks after the bank said it would pay regulators $3 billion to settle its fake-accounts scandal.
Wells Fargo’s board is clawing back a $15 million stock bonus it gave to former CEO Tim Sloan last year, according to a proxy filing. The filing also shows Sloan received no severance from the bank when he stepped down in March 2019, after about two and a half years in the role, though he did have $1.6 million in compensation for 2019.
The board’s compensation committee “took into account, in addition to the timing of his resignation, the company’s performance … the status of the company’s risk management objectives and outstanding regulatory matters, including the progress that continued to be required on both at the time of his resignation,” it said in the filing.
Sloan was replaced by Charles Scharf, who took over in October 2019. Scharf’s annual pay was $23 million in 2019, the bank’s filing said.
News of the $15 million clawback comes just a few weeks after Wells Fargo agreed to pay the Securities and Exchange Commission and Department of Justice a $3 billion settlement over its fake-accounts scandal.
Earlier this month, then board chair Elizabeth “Betsy” Duke and board member James Quigley resigned under pressure from congressional leaders.
Scharf told lawmakers last week that the bank had a “flawed business model” and that the “culture was broken.” He also said that his company had “not yet done what is necessary to address our shortcomings,” according to a Bloomberg report.
“The sense of urgency within the company is very different today than it was four months ago [when he was hired],” he explained. “We’re going to have a much stronger centralized core when it comes to risk and control.”
— Related on ThinkAdvisor: