Wells Fargo claws back executive pay
WASHINGTON — Wells Fargo says CEO John Stumpf and the executive who ran the bank’s consumer banking division will forfeit tens of millions of dollars in bonuses as it tries to stem a scandal over its sales practices.
The board of directors at the nation’s second-largest bank said Tuesday that Stumpf will forfeit $41 million in stock awards, while former retail banking executive Carrie Tolstedt will forfeit $19 million of her stock awards, effective immediately. Both are also giving up any bonuses for 2016.
The San Franciscobased bank’s independent directors are also launching an investigation while the Labor Department has started a “top-to-bottom review” of how the bank treated employees as it pushed aggressive sales quotas that led to the bank’s fake-accounts scandal.
A working group that includes officials from five Labor Department enforcement divisions has been established to conduct a “thorough and expedient review” of complaints against Wells Fargo in recent years alleging failure to pay overtime and other possible infractions, Labor Secretary Tom Perez said.
The agency has set up a website for current and former Wells Fargo workers to instruct them how to file complaints about labor law violations. Workers can call the department’s toll-free hotline (1-866487-2365) or send an email to talktodol@dol.gov.
“Given the serious nature of the allegations, the recent actions of federal partners and recent media reports, I have directed enforcement agencies with the department to conduct a top-to-bottom review of cases, complaints or violations concerning Wells Fargo over the last several years,” Perez wrote Monday in a letter to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.
A Wells Fargo spokeswoman said Tuesday the bank had no comment on the Labor Department action.
Warren and other senators wrote to Perez last week asking for an investigation following Wells Fargo’s agreement to pay $185 million to settle investigations by Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer and federal regulators into improper sales tactics.
The senators noted several civil lawsuits and other complaints by Wells Fargo workers alleging the bank failed to pay overtime spent working to meet sales quotas.
The department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration whistleblower program “has received a number of complaints from Wells Fargo employees” over the past five years, Perez said. The majority of the cases have been concluded.
But OSHA still is investigating “at least a handful of complaints” from current or former Wells Fargo employees, Perez said.