Washington
“I am angry about how we handled these problems,” Sloan told the Senate Banking Committee. “We can never let something like this happen again.”
The bank has overhauled its community banking division where the problems occurred, ditched the aggressive sales goals that led some employees to open fake accounts and taken back millions in bonus money from senior executives, he said.
Sloan’s sales pitch appeared to fail to impress skeptical lawmakers. “What in God’s name were you thinking? I am not against big, but with all due respect, I am against dumb. I am against a business practice that has put Wells Fargo first and customers second,” said Sen. John Neely Kennedy, R-La. The changes the company has made “are not sufficient to reform a corporate culture that is willing to abuse its customers and employees in an effort to pad its numbers and increase executive compensation,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, ranking Democrat on the committee.
In one blistering exchange, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., a longtime Wall Street critic, questioned whether Sloan’s 30 years experience at the bank made him the right choice to reform its corporate culture. Warren brought out a large black binder filled with the transcripts of statements Sloan had made to investors over several years, noting how in several cases he appeared to be bragging about the company’s sales culture. “No one bragged more,” she said.
She said it was the aggressive sales culture that led Wells Fargo employees to open millions of fake accounts, she said.
“At best, you were incompetent, and at worst, you were complicit,” Warren told him. “Either way, you should be fired.”