Thread regarding Wells Fargo & Co. layoffs

The board is compensated plenty to be able to walk and chew gum. It seems clear they're not actively governing or applying pressure toward asset cap removal and control of operational expense. Maybe passively monitoring at best, sending LeSchart their heartfelt thoughts and prayers and intentions for good luck.

@fug+1hAlaR3d
Yes, this! How is this not obvious?!
If there’s no asset cap, there’s considerably less pressure on cutting expenses.

@cms+1hAlaR3d
I think you nailed it. What else would Charlie, Tolken, and Dimon talk about at holiday get togethers? We’re parlor games for them.

Maybe the pandemic has allowed him to be giving more slack than he would’ve been otherwise for the same results. The situation over the past 2 years is more or less unprecedented in the modern economy, and everyone is basically grasping at straws trying to guess what will happen next. Maybe the board feels like it can’t tell how much is really Charlie’s fault vs. would’ve happened here no matter who’s in charge.

My conspiracy theory is that he was placed in the position by JPM/CITI/MS/BofA/GS to weaken the bank. Sell assets, offshore hiring, onshore layoffs.

The efficiency ratio issue is largely self correcting once the asset cap goes away.

As long as it is in place, Wells Fargo can't grow through issuing new loans which would raise profits.

As of April, Wells Fargo had reduced its employee headcount by 8.2% over the previous year. Scharf said it would take a few more years to get the asset cap lifted.

So they are trying to juggle cutting expenses for the shareholders (and their bonuses) while working on the asset cap.

The asset cap should have been the first and only priority as it is the main factor in restricting growth and profitability. It has been in place for four years now with the end nowhere in sight.

Cost cutting is slapping lipstick on a pig until the cap is gone and is a distraction.

@oro+1hAlaR3d - earnings call remarks for 2Q 2020, with a nod to low interest rates and Covid impacts. In light of the main reason for the existence of this site, it's fascinating to read the non-committal address to expenses that's only remained wishy washy for two years since: "I have acknowledged in the past that our expenses are too high and that we're building road maps to improve our efficiency ratio..."

https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2020/07/14/wells-fargo-wfc-q2-2020-earnings-call-transcript.aspx

Someone, other than the employees, doesn’t like Charlie as CEO. WFC stock is down 35% from it’s 52 week high vs the market being down 15%. Maybe once Charlie stopped running the stock price up with corporate funds, it came back down to where it should have been trading all along. And our BOD gave him a raise based on what??

I would love to work for the Senate Banking Committee. And the WSJ. And Jerome Powell.
I could easily take the entire senior leadership mafia down.

That operating income is even more damming than I could imagine. Recently had a town hall and our senior leader basically laid out Charlie’s talking points. 1. Get RCSA done. That is Charlie’s asset cap Hail Mary. 2. Remind everyone how bad things were. That one is hilarious to me. We are roughly 6 years removed from the account scandal and Charlie is still using it as an excuse for why his cleanup hasn’t seen any tangible results.

I’m even more convinced that it the asset cap isn’t lifted by the end of Q1 with a republican congress, he will likely be on the outs.

Agree. Charlie has instigated a take-over from within, selling off profitable businesses, setting his former JPM cronies with generous salaries but no real expertise or deliverables. The few qualified people that managed to get hired into senior risk positions ran screaming once they got wind of how we do things, and the pi-s poor solutions they were expected to implement.

Charlie, Kleber, Bill and the rest of Charlie's pals came to Wells Fargo for a job, but they didn't come here to work. There's a difference - they are like corporate raiders who are here to milk a formerly "good" company dry and they're already selling off the parts.
Jump ship folks! Plenty of jobs out there.

We were not looking too bad until 2020 q2, does anyone know what happened there that was drastically different from the competition? That is a dramatic jump.

Charlie Shart this, Charlie Ba-f that...

Make the money and live life, let me play their games :)

Expense slashing is a myth.

We've been lagging peers since the reign of King Charles and relative to operating income, we're flat to trending worse.

Quarter / Ratio / Peers
2019 Q2 / 56.11 / 53.98
2019 Q3 / 65.25 / 55.6
2019 Q4 / 71.33 / 57.53
2020 Q1 / 66.66 / 61.68
2020 Q2 / 81.35 / 57.9
2020 Q3 / 76.1 / 59.95
2020 Q4 / 80.14 / 60.35
2021 Q1 / 72.57 / 59.35
2021 Q2 / 67.08 / 60.8
2021 Q3 / 71.29 / 59.78
2021 Q4 / 68.24 / 63.18
2022 Q1 / 74.56 / 60.97

Of the big four, WFC is the only bank whose ratio begins with a 7 - ouch! More interesting data at BankRegData.com

Have the expenses actually been slashed?

I don’t know the answer. I do know the one thing he slashed is the dividend. Our shareholders got a haircut, and our CEO got a raise?? He sold off some of our profitable business lines. He closed a few brick and mortars. He laid off workers, but we had to pay up to a year’s worth of severance without getting the productivity. He replaced low-wage workers with his high-wage JPM pals. The instability at the top is costing us. We are having to pay the highest upfront packages to attract Financial Advisors and yet still can’t even come close to replacing those FAs who have left and taken their customer assets with them. He spent multiple billions of dollars on company stock which is now trading at a loss. Our BOD is paying him nearly a double vs our previous CEOs. We keep getting hit with new scandals and fines and lawsuits. Low employee morale is cutting in to productivity.

I think he’s full of sh-t and so is our BOD.

Before we give him any credit for doing anything with expenses, let's wait until we report efficient ratios against those of peers in the next few days, weeks.

Think we'll continue to see Chaz and friends aren't winning any expense discipline prizes.

Post ID: @yth+1hAlaR3d

Am I the only one who sees your response as the best and clearest example of what is so tragically wrong at Wells Fargo? (I can not name even one thing that is right at Wells Fargo.)

If I am a large shareholder and I ask the Board why they continue to employ a CEO who has yet to fulfill his “highest priority” of getting us right with the Feds, and the BOD says “Hah! Well he is the only guy we could get at the time.”

Is that not an enormous red flag? What more does anyone need to know?

I'm a pleeb and have no insider information, but if you're right I hope the asset cap stays in place another year. FRTO and the horse it rode in on.

Now that the expenses have been slashed, the boards focus is on risk. Managing risk is now the asset cap will be lifted. I got see wells hiring a Chief Risk Officer to become the new CEO. Charlie had no plan to have the asset cap lifted. He doesn’t even acknowledge it’s there x the most he does is throw people at it which sounds good to the board but regulators see right through it.

His best bet is a red wave that’ll let him cash in on the donations made by the company. I don’t want to sound like an alarmist but wells is in serious trouble if they enter a recession under an asset cap

No one wanted the CEO job in the first place. It took almost a year to hire one. I doubt this CEO is going anywhere.

Charlie is nothing more than a bullshitter and a grifter. Getting the CEO gig at Wells and offshoring and gutting the bank while getting paid is his biggest grift of all. He's a worse leader than Kovacevich, Stumpf and Sloan combined.