A Showdown Over Wells Fargo’s Board of Directors Looms -
By STACY COWLEY and MICHAEL CORKERYAPRIL 24, 2017
PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — The scandal at Wells Fargo over the creation of millions of fake bank accounts
cost more than 5,300 people their jobs, many of them tellers and other low-level employees.
The bank’s directors allowed Wells Fargo’s decentralized management system to flourish, even though it gave them fairly little insight into important operational areas, and they — like the bank’s regulators — overlooked signals
that something was badly amiss, including a growing number of whistle-blower complaints and firings of employees.
Giant pension funds — like Calpers, which manages the retirement funds of California’s public employees,
and its New York City counterpart — are planning to vote against most of Wells’s 15 board members, saying they failed in their duties to oversee the company.
The Wells Fargo meeting promises more fireworks as groups of nuns
and environmentalists — in particular, those who oppose the Dakota Access Pipeline, which Wells has helped finance — converge on the resort.
On Monday, Wells Fargo received a rare respite from months of regulatory pressure: The Federal Reserve
and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation said Wells Fargo had submitted an adequate plan to wind down in the event that it faced a financial catastrophe.
The next group of employees who could lose their jobs are Wells Fargo’s board of directors,
who face re-election on Tuesday at the bank’s annual shareholder meeting.
