Wells Fargo to Claw Back $75 Million From Former Executives -<br />By STACY COWLEY and JENNIFER A. KINGSONAPRIL 10, 2017<br />Wells Fargo’s board said on Monday that it would claw back an additional $75 million in compensation from the two executives on whom it pinned most of the blame for the company’s sales scandal: the bank’s former chief executive, John G. Stumpf,<br />and its former head of community banking, Carrie L. Tolstedt.<br />During the period when sham accounts were being pumped out — employees created as many as two million unwanted bank accounts<br />and credit card accounts — Mr. Stumpf used to brag during quarterly earnings calls about Wells Fargo’s cross-selling prowess.<br />Mr. Stumpf — who had a long and warm professional relationship with Ms. Tolstedt and was inclined to trust her and let her manage on her own — was warned as early as 2012 about “numerous” customer and employee complaints about the company’s sales tactics but ignored growing evidence<br />that the problem was pervasive, the board said in its report.<br />The January sales frenzy was found to produce more turnover, lower-quality accounts and overall employee misery, but the bank was “hesitant to end the program because Tolstedt was ‘scared to death’<br />that it could hurt sales figures for the entire year,” the report said.<br />There, senior bankers were “particularly associated with extreme pressure, in some cases calling their subordinates several times a day to check in on sales performance<br />and chastising those who failed to meet sales objectives.”<br />The sales pressure peaked each January, when the bank imposed higher daily sales targets on its workers as part of a “Jump into January” campaign.<br />In a scathing 113-page report that made it clear that all the warning signs of the problem had been glaring, the board released the results of its six-month investigation into the conditions and culture<br />that prompted thousands of Wells Fargo employees to create fraudulent accounts in an effort to meet aggressive sales goals.
