I was talking to a Manager Director in Internal Audit at Bank of America (BOA). He told me that there are only 4 management layers down from the CEO at BOA. For example, you have the CEO, Chief Risk Officer, Chief Compliance Officer, a Managing Director, and then a SVP - All who manage more than 7 people. VPs are individual contributors not managers. At Wells Fargo, you have 7 total management layers which is was more than BoA, JP Morgan, BNY Mellon, etc. It was 8 layers until they laid off the useless Deputy Chief Compliance monster. So at some point, there is going to have to be some serious housecleaning in Risk and Compliance to get in line with our competitors from a Spans and Layers perspective and as you can see, a lot of heads will need to roll off as the regulatory problems get fixed. They literally need to cut risk and compliance in half to align with competitor headcount. It’s crazy!!!
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You are forgetting the big fat do nothing layers that make up the top top 2 FFS. We are heavily weighted in that group.
I think it’s foolish and dangerous to try to compare WFC to other big banks.
WFC can not operate with the same metrics as other Big Banks because our systems are 20-30 years behind. We are under an asset cap that isn’t going away any time soon. We aren’t making any real improvements to Compliance and Oversight - it’s all smoke and mirrors for the regulators. We are more focused on cost cutting than fixing the problems at their core. Employees are uninspired and detached.
And what are we paying a new CEO $25-$30 million per year for if his only plan is to copy other Big Bank’s moves? How about a CEO who can guide us to becoming a stand- out on our own terms rather than just playing “follow the leader” with our competitors. Why has our BOD set such a low bar for our CEO and for the company?
Let’s get someone in charge who has some real passion for making this THE company to work for. Not someone who wants to turn us into the next WMT.
We just need a few more executives, then everything will be just peachy! Yeah, that's the ticket! Surely there's still someone left at JPM or BMNY that Charlie knows!
In all seriousness, many parts of the company already have minimal layers. Compliance may be an all S show, I wouldn't know, but 8 layers is not a company wide standard or anything.
Well we can only hope the below is true, and of course late this year would be two years, which is about the same amount of time he was at BNYM doing much the same, tormenting employees with little real result and zero meaningful change.
I was hopeful at first, but concluded a while ago that his tenure year was not going to be a sincere effort of any kind, just a gravy train of fat paychecks for FoCs.
Charlie has already fallen flat on his face. The only person “doing nothing” at Wells Fargo is Charlie Scharf.
I’ve heard the BOD has begun talks about how to replace him without losing the respect of our shareholders.
Yet Senior leaders hire more and more executives every month.
We should all be CEO's that way we only have 1 layer
I say take out the 2 lower layers of management, i mean come on, what do they do all day? Also throughout the bank
Our efficiency ratio is like 83%, everyone else in industry is some where around 55-60%. That's a massive delta, on the order of billions and billions. We've been paying out outside consultants billions now for years now. These outside consultants have no doubt paid politicians as kick backs. If you ever wonder what's really going on just follow the trail of money.
Good - it needs to be done - not sure why he is holding back! Get that chainsaw going now!!!
Don't you worry, Chainsaw Charlie has been hard at work flattening the curve.
It means that they definitely need to eliminate the 7th layer of VP managers and another layer beyond that - such as the managers who report into the Chief Compliance Officer or the layer below that to get in line with competitors.