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,
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.”
The nuns, members of Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia, want to see Wells Fargo commit to “real, systemic change in culture, ethics, values
and financial sustainability,” said Sister Nora M. Nash, the order’s director of corporate social responsibility.
Wells Fargo Leaders Reaped Lavish Pay Even as Account Scandal Unfolded -
By STACY COWLEYMARCH 16, 2017
Wells Fargo and its leaders have expressed much contrition about the bank’s misdeeds, which
included setting up as many as 2 million bank accounts without customers’ consent.
Wells Fargo’s former chief executive, John G. Stumpf, realized pretax earnings of more than $83 million by exercising
vested stock options, amassed over his 34 years at the bank, and receiving payouts on certain stock awards.
That is more than double the $41 million in unvested stock awards that Mr. Stumpf forfeited because of the bank’s sales scandal.
In a quirk of timing that might raise some questions, one month before regulators announced penalties against Wells Fargo over
its long-running fake accounts scheme, Mr. Stumpf exercised 1.5 million options, a significant chunk of his vested holdings.