THE GARY DETAILS
Wells Fargo wooed Cohn for top spot: sources
Some board members off scandal-ridden Wells Fargo reached out to Gary Cohn last spring to gauge the former Goldman Sachs president’s interest in becoming the 186year-old bank’s next chief executive, The Post has learned.
Cohn, who had stepped down as President Trump’s chief economic adviser just weeks earlier, was pursued by Wells Fargo board members earlier this year, five sources said.
The board members met with Cohn at least once in March or April, one source said.
“They approached him,” one source said. “He turned them down.”
Betsy Duke, the board’s chair, denied the board of directors “reached out to potential CEO candidates,” Bloomberg reported.
But the members who approached Cohn may have done so as individuals and not the board.
Asked on Wednesday whether board members had approached Cohn, a Wells Fargo spokeswoman declined to comment.
Since Chief Executive Tim Sloan was named to the top post at Wells Fargo on Oct. 13, 2016, the bank has continued to be buffeted by regulatory actions.
In addition, under Sloan’s tenure, Wells Fargo shares have underperformed their peers — rising just 22 percent compared with an 86 percent gain for Bank of America and a 72 percent climb for JPMorgan Chase.
Recently, some Wells Fargo board members have grown impatient with Sloan, two sources said. Sloan’s prede- cessor, John Stumpf, was ousted in 2016 amid a fake-accounts scandal.
“Their board isn’t 100 percent happy [with Sloan] because he didn’t stop the bleeding,” one high-profile bank executive said. “He still has their support, but they’re not in love with him.”
Wells Fargo on Wednesday did not directly address whether some directors have grown impatient with Sloan.
“The assertions in this story are inaccurate; Tim Sloan has the full support of the Wells Fargo board of directors,” bank spokeswoman Arati Randolph told The Post.
Asked by The Post following an event in New York on Monday evening, Cohn emphatically denied that he was still in talks with Wells Fargo.
“Absolutely not. Absolutely not — and you can put that on the record,” Cohn said.
Meanwhile, speculation about the new landing place for the 58-year-old Cohn — who had squabbled with Trump over everything from trade wars to Charlottesville — has become a favorite parlor game on Wall Street.
“I knew a couple banks were poking their heads,” another CEO who’s friendly with Cohn told The Post.
“I’m looking at some new and interesting — very, very interesting opportunities,” Cohn said on Monday.
As for Wells Fargo, fresh headlines about its aggressive sales culture have continued to spill out nearly two years after it settled with regulators over opening millions of fake accounts and credit cards in order to meet sales quotas.
In the past two months, regulators rejected the bank’s settlement agreement over unnecessary auto insurance as too small; the bank admitted a glitch led to hundreds of home foreclosures; and the Justice Department has opened an investigation into staffers altering wholesale customers’ documents, according to reports.