Charlie is literally digging wells into a deeeper hole in terms of reputation and relationship with regulators. Let’s start with reputation. Wells has been riddled with scandal and literally hasn’t had any good press in I don’t know how long. Hence why even though every bank was cheating the PPP wells was the one in headlines. Now they come out and say they’ll be conducting layoffs during a pandemic and recession without specifying the groups. Do you know how heartless you have to be to cut team members months after you bring in your high salary friends? Whose gonna want to keep their accounts after they were laid off? Whose gonna want to bank with a firm who lacks technology, ethics and laid off a friend or family
Now regulators. It’s my belief Tim Sloan had the right idea of how to turn wells around. yes he was here during the scandal but his idea of building out the Second line to address and identify issues was valuable to calming down the regulators. The only problem is the house gave him literally no time to work. How is that same house going to react when they see Charlie gut the risk department in an effort to cut costs? Is he really going to convince them less people will make it easier to address the MRAs, Consent Orders and Remediation’s in addition to the everyday business? Everytime he talks about the regulator work it’s simply focused on meeting the deadlines. Nothing about actually changing the bank for the better. Charlie isn’t here to make the bank better. He’s not here to get the asset cap lifted. He’s only here because nobody else would touch the position so the board needed someone to make the bank look more attractive. Put lipstick on the pig if you will. Let’s just hope there is a bank left to fix once his pockets are lined.