Wells Fargo Board Halts Pay for Two Former Executives

Wells Fargo’s board of directors has pulled back payments to two former executives blamed for the company’s sales abuses that resulted in $185 million in fines against the banking giant. According to an internal report, an independent investigation determined former Chief Executive John Stumpf and former retail bank chief Carrie Tolstedt allegedly misled Wells Fargo’s oversight committee and led it to rescind $75 million in pay last year. The board found that both Stumpf and Tolstedt did not sufficiently counter the problem of thousands employees opening millions of fraudulent accounts to meet sales targets. “Stumpf was by nature an optimistic executive who refused to believe that the sales model was seriously impaired. He was too late and too slow to call for inspection of or critical challenge to the basic business model,” the report states.