Angry outcry at bank summit
S.F. protesters disrupt Wells Fargo meeting celebrating record profit
Protesters enraged about the country’s economic miasma disrupted Wells Fargo’s annual summit Tuesday, as shareholders celebrated the bank’s record profit and awarded its chief executive a pay package of nearly $20 million.
Hundreds of activists — including union members, Occupy activists and people whose homes have been foreclosed — surrounded the Merchants Exchange Building in downtown San Francisco, where about 250 shareholders gathered on the 15th floor to hear details of the bank’s 28 percent profit increase last year.
Shareholders meetings are seldom tense affairs, but people attending this one had to pass through metal detectors and several layers of security. Afterward, San Francisco police ordered them to stay inside the chandelier-laden Julia Morgan Ballroom for 45 minutes as protesters outside dispersed.
Fifteen protesters, allowed into the meeting because they own stock in Wells Fargo, shouted over CEO John Stumpf as he presented a Powerpoint slide show about the bank’s $15.9 billion profit last year.
Police escorted out the protesters, who were cited for disrupting the meeting and released.
The session ended in about 40 minutes. Among other actions, shareholders approved a compensation package for Stumpf of $19.8 million in salary, stock and other incentives, a decrease of about $1 million from last year.
“The bank is pleased with the progress we’ve made in a tough economy,” said bank Vice President Oscar Suris. “We’ll continue focusing on our customers, and that includes our customers who are going through difficult economic times.”
Generous actions
Wells Fargo, one of the largest banks in the world, is also among the most generous, spokeswoman Holly Rockwood said. The bank has modified more than 740,000 home mortgages and forgiven about $4 billion in principal since 2009, she said.
It’s also among the top corporate charity donors, she said. In 2011, Wells Fargo gave $19.6 million to nonprofits in the Bay Area, she said.
It was the bank’s involvement in foreclosures, however, that brought hundreds of protesters to the meeting, held across California Street from the bank’s corporate headquarters. The demonstrators came from a variety of labor, Occupy and other protest groups from all over the Bay Area. Some came from as far away as Minnesota.
They filled the air with lively chants, led by people using loudspeakers set up on a flatbed truck alongside an 8-foot-high, inflated rat smoking a cigar. A protester-built, 10-foot-high mockup of Wells Fargo’s signature stagecoach stood in the street, covered with slogans denouncing the bank.
9 arrested outside
Nine protesters were arrested outside the building on charges including trespassing and resisting arrest, said police spokesman Sgt. Michael Andraychak. All were cited and released except for two, who were booked on charges of attempting to hit sheriff’s deputies, he said.
Dozens of officers from the San Francisco sheriff’s and police departments monitored the protest, along with California Highway Patrol officers in an overhead helicopter.
The Rev. Gloria Del Castillo of San Francisco said she was joining the protest not just as a religious leader, but as someone going through a foreclosure herself.
“After banking with Wells Fargo for decades and having a great credit score, I asked them for a loan modification so I could stay in my home,” she said. “Wells Fargo denied it.”
Praying for bankers
She said she was praying for the bank’s shareholders and executive officers.
“What affects one affects us all,” Del Castillo said. “If we don’t act like that, we will all suffer.”
Rick Flicek, 51, stood alongside the stagecoach mockup and called the bankers “predatory lenders.”
“A lot of people getting foreclosed on are getting double-trapped,” he said. “One department is saying, ‘Work with us, work with us,’ but by the time you’re done with all the paperwork, you’ve already lost your home.”
Wells Fargo was prepared for the protests, with heavy security and an army of staff to help shareholders and other visitors.
“We respect this country’s great tradition of allowing people to peacefully express their dissent,” Suris said. “But I think we can get a lot more done through collaboration than through confrontation.”