At next month’s annual shareholders meeting, the bank’s top executives will confront disgruntled investors, including an order of nuns who say they are embarrassed to call Wells Fargo their bank,<br />and Gerald R. Armstrong, who has held the bank’s stock for nearly 50 years and thinks the “lap dogs” on the bank’s board need to be replaced by a “growling Doberman.”<br />The nuns, members of Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia, want to see Wells Fargo commit to “real, systemic change in culture, ethics, values<br />and financial sustainability,” said Sister Nora M. Nash, the order’s director of corporate social responsibility.<br />Wells Fargo Leaders Reaped Lavish Pay Even as Account Scandal Unfolded -<br />By STACY COWLEYMARCH 16, 2017<br />Wells Fargo and its leaders have expressed much contrition about the bank’s misdeeds, which<br />included setting up as many as 2 million bank accounts without customers’ consent.<br />Wells Fargo’s former chief executive, John G. Stumpf, realized pretax earnings of more than $83 million by exercising<br />vested stock options, amassed over his 34 years at the bank, and receiving payouts on certain stock awards.<br />That is more than double the $41 million in unvested stock awards that Mr. Stumpf forfeited because of the bank’s sales scandal.<br />In a quirk of timing that might raise some questions, one month before regulators announced penalties against Wells Fargo over<br />its long-running fake accounts scheme, Mr. Stumpf exercised 1.5 million options, a significant chunk of his vested holdings.
