SAN FRANCISCO–Two members of the Wells Fargo board of directors, including its chairwoman, have resigned following a scathing report by the House Committee on Financial Services.
The resignations come as two separate hearings are being held this week in Congress on the numerous scandals that have taken place at the mega-bank.
Resigning from the board were Chairwoman Elizabeth A. Duke and board member James Quigley, both of whom were featured in the House report, which CUToday.info reported here.
Both Duke and Quigley had been scheduled to appear before a House committee hearing today.
The House report pointed to thousands of pages of documents, emails and internal notes to conclude the bank had not properly addressed its problems.
Duke had served on the Wells Fargo board since 2016 and was elected chair in January 2018, making her among the highest ranking women in banking, noted the Washington Post. Quigley had been a board member since 2013 and is CEO emeritus at consulting firm Deloitte.
Charles H. Noski, the former chief financial officer of Bank of America, will become chair of the company’s board.
‘Why Are You Sending It To Me?’
The Post reported that in 2017, Duke, then vice chair of Wells Fargo’s board, questioned why the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau included her on communications about actions the bank needed to take, according to the report. “Why are you sending it to me, the board, rather than the department manager?” she asked, according to notes taken by a Bureau official that were cited in the report, the Post said.
“A Bureau official later said Duke’s response came as a ‘surprise,’ given board members ‘would not typically object to receiving communication from a regulator,’ according to the report,” the Post said.
Separately, Quigley reportedly resisted attending a meeting with one of the bank’s regulators because he would be in the Galápagos Islands on those dates.
Maxine Waters (D-CA), chair of the committee, called on Duke and Quigley to resign last week.
Turning the Page
In a statement, Duke and Quigley said their resignations would allow the bank’s new CEO, Charles Scharf, to “turn the page” and “avoid distraction that could impede the bank’s future progress.”
“Out of continued loyalty to Wells Fargo and ongoing commitment to serve our customers and employees, we recommended to our colleagues on the board that we step down from our leadership roles,” the statement said.
As CUToday.info has extensively reported, Wells Fargo has been embroiled in numerous scandals, the largest of which involved the opening of millions of fake accounts in the names of customers. It also mistakenly foreclosed on hundreds of clients and repossessed the cars of thousands of others.
$3 Billion-Plus in Fines
As CUToday.info also reported here, Wells Fargo recently reached a $3-billion settlement with the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission that included acknowledging that for more than a decade, thousands of employees falsified records, forged signatures and misused customers’ personal information to meet unrealistic sales goals, opening millions of accounts consumers didn’t want in the process.
The bank’s former CEO, John Stumpf, who departed in 2016 was fined$17.5 million for his role, while other former senior executives have paid smaller fines.