FARGO, GOING, GONE

Chair out, takes $$

Wells Fargo is giving its chairman the boot after the latest onslaught of scandals at the bank — after paying him nearly $500,000 to clean up a mess that has only gotten worse.

Stephen Sanger, a former General Mills chairman who has helmed the bank’s board for less than a year, plans to step down — but could wait until next summer to do so, according to reports.

Sanger has already done well for himself after less than a year as chairman. He made $485,000 in total compensation last year, according to the bank’s most recent proxy statement. He’s also entitled to an additional $250,000 annual stipend, according to the bank’s bylaws, which were updated in November.

On top of that, Sanger owns a $4.3 million stake in the bank, securities filings show. He has been on the board since 2003, according to his bio.

Sanger, 71, was named chairman after last year’s fake-accounts scandal swept out former CEO John Stumpf and other executives on whose watch more than 2 million fake accounts were opened since 2011.

Sanger is expected to step down by the bank’s spring shareholder meeting, which is typically held in June, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

Sanger will be replaced by Elizabeth Duke, who was also brought onto the board at around the same time as Sanger, according to the Journal. She was previously on the board of governors of the Federal Reserve, and before that was the chief operating officer for TowneBank, a mediumsized lender in Virginia.

A Wells Fargo spokesman declined to comment.

There’s been increased pressure on the bank to make changes at the top after it admitted less than two weeks ago it had ripped off its auto loan customers.

The bank had known about the problem for more than a year — even before the fakeaccounts scandal broke — but didn’t tell the public about the full extent of it.

The increased scrutiny led to a cascade of other disclosures, including different kinds of forced insurance, a previously undisclosed government investigation and “significantly” more fake accounts than previously reported, the bank said last week.

The board shuffle marks another victory for some of the bank’s biggest critics.

Earlier this year, Sanger barely held onto his job after just 56 percent of shareholders voted to approve his continued employment at the bank.