Tim Sloan stepped down as chief executive of Wells Fargo with immediate effect on Thursday, March 28, 2019, ending a 31-year run at a bank still digging out from its sales scandal.
Sloan took the top job in October 2016, tasked with cleaning up after employees were found to have opened millions of fake accounts to hit sales goals. More problems followed across mortgage, auto lending and wealth management, and the Federal Reserve capped the bank’s asset growth the previous year.
On his way out, Sloan said he had become a distraction. “I could not keep myself in a position where I was becoming a distraction,” he said on a call with analysts. Betsy Duke, the board’s chair, said a new leader would best position the company for success.
The general counsel, Allen Parker, took over on an interim basis. The board said it would hire from outside the company, an admission that promoting from within had not delivered the reforms regulators wanted.
The departure still came quickly. Weeks earlier the bank had raised Sloan’s pay by 5 percent, to $18.4 million, and defended him against reports that directors were interviewing successors. Just two weeks before he left, he had told Congress the bank was on the mend.
Senator Elizabeth Warren, a longtime critic, said Sloan should get no golden parachute. “He enabled Wells Fargo’s massive fake accounts scam, got rich off it, & then helped cover it up,” she wrote.
Equilar, an executive compensation firm, calculated that Sloan was paid more than $150 million over eight years, and that stock grants worth about $24 million would keep vesting over the next three years. Wells Fargo shares rose more than 2 percent after the news.
Sources
- Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan retiring
- Wells Fargo C.E.O. Timothy Sloan Abruptly Steps Down – The New York Times
