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Author Brooke Southall September 30, 2019 at 8:06 PM
Career hopscotching Charles W. Scharf surprised BNY Mellon by making a highly predictable move when he leaped to Wells Fargo -- after all, the job pays 40% more.
The now ex-CEO of the ancient New York institution is taking over the once high-flying San Francisco commercial bank after it was laid low by a scandal involving millions of fraudulent savings and checking accounts opened on behalf of clients without consent.
It's his third CEO role at a mega banking brand in three years. The Wells board, Sept. 27, named Scharf the company’s CEO and president, effective Oct. 21.
"[Scharf] seems a very defensible choice to regulators, and he has led a charmed career, navigating to the top across several name brand companies," says Jon Holtaway, CEO of Ategra Capital Management, which invests primarily in the shares of undervalued financial firms.
"Wells Fargo is almost six times bigger in market cap ($222 billion versus $43 billion and BNY) and trades at a relative discount, making the opportunity exponentially bigger. Stock buybacks can drive earnings-per-share at Wells Fargo easier than at Bank of New York," Holtaway says.
Scharf, 54, only came to BNY Mellon two years ago from San Francisco-based VISA -- ostensibly to avoid the 3,000-mile coast-to coast, home-to-office commute he'd been making at the credit card giant.