Elizabeth Duke, 65, will succeed Stephen Sanger, 71-year-old, who will leave his duties in the board of directors of the bank on the 1st of January next. In addition to Mr. Sanger, the other two members of the council will leave their positions at the end of the year, Cynthia Milligan and Susan Swenson. A new independent member will be added, however, in the person of Juan Pujada, who has previously worked for the firm audit PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC).
In total, the board of directors of Wells Fargo will consist of 13 members, which is a little less than the average of recent years (from 14 to 16 members).
Mrs. Duke, known as “Betsy”, a particular part of the board of governors of the Fed, the u.s. central bank, from 2008 to 2013 and was the president of the bankers association american from 2004 to 2005. She was already vice-president of the board of directors of Wells Fargo.
5.300 employees dismissed in the wake of the scandal of illicit gratuities
The bank of california, seeks to draw a line under the scandal of the opening of the 2 million fake accounts opened without the knowledge of the customers between may 2002 and April 2017 that allowed the employees of the bank to receive illicit gratuities. Thanks to the opening of these accounts not authorized, the bank had fraudulently charged its customers commissions and other expenses. After the discovery of these malpractices in September 2016, some 5,300 employees involved were dismissed and Wells Fargo was fined $ 185 million.
|Read : Wells Fargo Bank : the boss apologizes for the accounts ghosts
To try to improve its image, the bank has in parallel decided to reduce 50% of the remuneration for shares of the eight leaders, who had been booked in 2014 and should be paid in 2016. The sanction was based on “the accountability of the management team” and not on the “illegal acts”, had clarified the bank. In total, $ 32 million of compensation will be excluded from these eight leaders.
New fraud discoveries
Before being forced in October to resign because of the scandal, the former Ceo of Wells Fargo, John Stumpf, had, him, had to forego $ 41 million of compensation in stock options. The bank, whose largest shareholder is billionaire Warren Buffett, is home to 40 million bank accounts opened by individuals in the United States and granted a loan in five people in the country.
In early August, Wells Fargo had warned that the number of fake accounts could ultimately exceed $ 2 million, and that it was also the subject of an investigation on the gel, and closing abusive accounts savings after that suspicious activities have been detected. At the end of July, the institution had also indicated that over half a million of its customers have paid insurance premiums that are superfluous on the auto loans it had granted.
But in this case, the position of Donald Trump is also pointing the finger : he argues consumers, victims, or the bank that has failed ? For senator Elizabeth Warren, the answer is that Trump seeks to protect the interests of the bank as a collective action in court has been launched which could cost several billion dollars to the bank.
|Reading : The scandal of the Wells Fargo bank “disappears” under Trump
(with agencies)
