https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2023/04/26/wells-fargo-ceo-charlie-scharf-on-fixing-the-bank.html
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Wells Fargo CEO Charlie Scharf offered a candid response at this week’s annual meeting to a question he hears frequently: Why is it taking so long to turn around Wells Fargo?
Wells (NYSE: WFC) is seeking to recover from a series of scandals that first came to light in 2016 when the bank received its first regulatory fines for its fake accounts scandal, in which deposit and credit accounts were opened without customer authorization as employees sought to meet ambitious sales goals.
Scharf was brought in as CEO in October 2019 to help the bank move beyond its woes.
"When I arrived at Wells Fargo in 2019, we were not as far along as I had expected," Scharf told those attending Tuesday's virtual annual meeting. At the time, Wells had in place a dozen open public enforcement actions, notices from regulators that changes were needed. "Given this and the other control issues we needed to assess, it took many months to understand the depth and breadth of the weaknesses and what was required to complete the work."
The bank now has nine open public enforcement actions, signaling just how far Wells has to go to right the ship.
Scharf also pointed to the bank overhauling its senior leadership team since he arrived, with several new executives joining the bank’s operating committee. These new leaders had to make their own assessments and plans to address issues in their areas of the bank as well as build out their own teams. Since Scharf joined Wells Fargo, 12 executives on the 17-member operating committee are new to the bank and 15 are new to their roles. (No member of the operating committee is based in San Francisco, the bank’s headquarters since its founding in 1852.)
"We continue to strengthen the leadership team, and we are executing on our strategic objectives," Scharf said. "We are focusing on businesses where we can generate appropriate risk-adjusted returns."
One of the latest leadership changes underway is the planned retirement of Mary Mack as CEO of consumer and small business banking. She will be succeeded next month by Saul Van Beurden, who is the bank’s head of technology. He joined Wells in 2019, coming from JPMorgan Chase.
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"Our No. 1 priority continues to be building a risk and control infrastructure appropriate for a company of our size and complexity," Scharf said. "I'm frequently asked why our risk and regulatory work is not complete.
"Simply said, the work to build the appropriate risk and control infrastructure and close consent orders takes years, when managed effectively," Scharf said, adding that the decision on lifting a Fed-imposed asset cap on the bank is entirely in the hands of regulators.
It's simple. CS doesn't have what it takes to run a WF Bank or a JPMC, so he is chopping it down to the size he and his JPMC cronies can manage. They don't call him Chainsaw Charlie for nothing... too bad it's happening to the stagecoach and Wachovia that the corrupt Norwest bought out.
Basic summation:
"I'm 1/4 of the way there, that's progress"
"The bank was far worse off than anyone imagined"
"I hired executives who had to remake their empires and that slowed us down"
"It's the regulators' fault"
https://archive.is/CCEKO