Thread regarding Wells Fargo & Co. layoffs

@1zpz+19PAQKUn

FYI - John Stump, Tim Sloan, Carrie Tolstedt all had their head-in-the-sand diehard supporters too.

Carrie Tolstedt was named one of the 25 Most Powerful Women in Banking 2 years before the scandal. John Stumpf was named CEO of the Year by Morningstar 1 year before the scandal, beating out Jeff Bezos. And most people really supported and liked Tim Sloan, including the BOD.

Bernie Madoff had many who went to bat for him too. For years!

You will figure it out at some point, but keep your eyes and your mind open.

Post ID: @1zpz+19PAQKUn

OP here: You sound very angry. My post is my POV - I think it’s interesting that you come out with your gloves on criticizing me, personally, as well as my post. You must really love Charlie. Not sure what to say about that, but I’m glad he has someone who does. ♥️

Post ID: @byf+19PAQKUn

Dude, Wut RU babbling about?

@ndz our financial penalties pale in comparison to Chase

@OP+19PAQKUn

No OP, not everything in life lends itself to oversimplification and your entire post was a classic example of oversimplification. You apparently have no concept of how 2 decades of crime and shenanigans has forced us to sell off or dismantle businesses which are based upon trust, such as Asset Management, international wealth business, the Abbot Downing brand and the retirement-plan business. You also don’t seem to comprehend that Wells was the last bank to exit student loans... every other better run bank exited the student loan business when the Government took it over as part of the Affordable Healthcare Act, commonly called Obamacare.

Finance indeed is inherently complex. Your mind on the the other hand is inherently simple.

Charlie is working his tail off to save Wells Fargo. We had been reduced to a less than middle-of-the-road player long before Charlie arrived to salvage us.

Hard to believe that you work in banking.

If the actual numbers "downplay" something that's a function of your own mind. The number of accounts with fees are known. The amount of those fees are known. It's not in dispute at this point. If I had run anything back in the day, none of this would have happened, but some former employees broke the law and got fired. Customers got restitution. The regulators got their pound of flesh (for the government primarily, they really don't care about victims). Of course we have to do things right, no one suggested otherwise, but people act like this is the biggest scandal in the history of man and it isn't. Just look at the numbers. They have no attitude, only truth. It's sort of like how there's different sentencing for different crimes? Well, in this case some people are trying to give life in prison to the guy that walked down the street after the murderer did. Didn't actually k–l anyone...knows murder is wrong and would never do it himself...but by golly, let's lock that SOB up. I disagree with the idea that the seriousness of the offense changes that guy's guilt.

Post ID: @umn+19PAQKUn

Your lack of knowledge and downplaying of the fraud gave it away that you are new. The regulators see “the facts” differently than you. I’m not at all for blaming innocent people for other’s wrongdoing. Quite the contrary. But you have to understand the history so that we can get it right from here on out.

Your “attitude” is all over your post, including your smart-aleck “Want a cookie” response to those who disagree with you. My guess is that you have zero financial industry experience, so you probably should just stay out of it.

Anyone interested in the facts of wrongdoing at WF can go onto the violation tracker and see the total picture.

It’s not just the one thing, it’s cultural and there are many many people in lower or middle manager roles who continue to display questionable ethics and integrity.

https://violationtracker.goodjobsfirst.org/parent/wells-fargo

Wow, you guys are really bringing facts to the table. Impressive. Were you setting up fake accounts? I wasn't. Get over yourself. I don't have an "attitude" about the scandal, just the facts, and I'm generally tired of people blaming innocent people for things they didn't do. If you do like to do so, good for you. Want a cookie?

Post ID: @wvr+19PAQKUn

OP’s title applies to you if you work for WFC: You are an excellent example for the Dumbing Down of Wells Fargo.

Post ID: @wvr+19PAQKUn

I’m hoping you don’t actually work for WFC. It was those who had your attitude, and who attempted to downplay the details, who landed us under the now 3 year old asset cap. Ask Frank Codel, John Stumpf, Tim Sloan, Betsy Duke, James Quigly, Allen Parker.

If you still work for WFC, then no: we have not cleaned house.

@wvr, whatever you say about the scandals being in the past, etc., that doesn't change the public's opinion. The fact is that the retirement dept. lost billions in assets, thousands of accounts, and it was due to public perception. That perception is that we are crooks and would steal their retirement money.

"Crooks", hyperbole much? Every major bank in the country has a blemish of some kind on their resume...and people keep their $ and move their $ to them every single day. Most people can't tell you what happened last week, let alone 4 years ago. In reality there were 85,000 fake accounts that actually incurred fees, totaling $2M. That's under $24 per victim. Criminal, yes, but not exactly the apocalypse. Check out the 'controversies' section of the JP Morgan wiki sometime. People still send their $ to JPM right? Doesn't seem like scandals slow them much, in fact it seems like a complete non-factor. Everyone involved in the WF scandal is long gone, and the majority of the company wasn't involved when it did happen. It was a retail thing, and not all of us are retail. Whole new leadership team. Pretty much a whole new retail team. It's over, and it has been over for some time.

I don't know about the rest of the groups that were sold, but I do know they HAD to sell retirement. For many years our new business volume has gotten smaller each year, until it was down to a trickle. Employees in 401(k) plans would not tolerate their employer to move their plan to WF, putting their life savings in the hands of crooks. I would imagine there are some similar reasons for the other groups.

He is probably doing as being told, the govt is sick of all the theft and lack of managment oversight which caused all the customer frauds to occur.

Easier to do with a smaller footprint or none.

I don’t think it’s bad for someone to play the devil’s advocate. I think it’s beneficial when someone asks questions to challenge a position. And it can spark good conversation and even good ideas.

I want to see Wells Fargo do well because I have put so much of my time and energy (and blood and guts) in to this place. Just because the old executives didn’t do right by the company doesn’t mean that the new executives will automatically do any better. They are different, but not necessarily right.

Time will tell, but I don’t feel like I have to jump on to the Charlie train to want the best for Wells Fargo. He is our fourth CEO in approx 4 years. He shows no interest in his employees I’ll save my devotion for a CEO who has earned it.

Some good points here. I have been wondering about this myself. What is the endgame? I have concerns that laying off 25% of the employees is just a beginning number. How many more businesses is Wells Fargo planning to sell off? Maybe they can’t be transparent about the real business plan. Or maybe they are starting with Plan A, and if that doesn’t work they will proceed to a more aggressive Plan B. It will be interesting to see where we are 10 years down the road. I hope to be looking from afar.

If these units were raking in cash and were low-cost, they wouldn't be getting sold. WFC has tendrils in a lot of non-core stuff, and some of them will be shed to reduce overall expenses. That said, it's happening all over the company, just in a different way. Ask anyone in retail or mortgage. These ARE core areas and they still get branch closures and lose jobs every time demand for home loans dip. Literally every part of the company is looking to reduce costs. Sometimes that means outsourcing to overseas, sometimes it means contracting to a US business, sometimes it means site closures, and in the case of the areas OP is talking about sometimes it means re-orgs to merge units and/or selling entire units. Different approaches to the same general cost-cutting plan. People will hate Charlie for it, but I got news for you, the board wasn't going to hire ANYONE for the CEO job that wasn't willing to do these things. That's literally what they got hired for. Fix the relationship with regulators and reduce costs. That's the mandate from the board and any person they brought in would have done it.

Charlie is doing what he was brought in to do. He is on the right track. He has to get us lean.

He is managing the forest, while the OP is staring at a tree

@pcx Agree, our view from the cheap seats is limited. I don't have the answers, but I continue to argue that while I don't agree with all Charlie's decisions, he inherited a mess, and all his options for getting us out of it involve pain and really hard choices. It stinks to have nothing but not-great paths to choose from.

To folks who stay at WF because they don't want to give up PTO, LTI, tenure or whatever, but also complain non-stop about the direction the company is taking... pick a lane.

Complain, complain. complain and yet, still here.

I'm sure if you're running a ~$163Bn company with ~268K employees you'd see things differently. Rather than sitting on some random internet board pontificating, maybe you could go to CEO school and see what the view is like from the top.

Just my 2 cents worth.

Nah. Charlie is on the right track

Our stock is coming back with a vengeance.

He just needs to keep cutting things that don't make sense. Get us lean. He is doing exactly what he was brought in to do