Wells Fargo CEO Refuses to Commit to Pay Cut

The Chairman and CEO of Wells Fargo, John Stumpf, was lambasted on Capital Hill this week after senators learned that the nation’s third biggest bank by assets defrauded potentially millions of its customers over the past five years. Nothing got members of the Senate Banking Committee more riled up during Stumpf’s testimony on Tuesday than his refusal to commit to cutting his compensation or that of Carrie Tolstedt, who managed the unit where the fraud occurred. Adding insult to injury, Stumpf has laid blame for the bank’s scandal at the feet of its lowest-paid employees, the tellers and personal bankers in its branches — though Stumpf calls them “stores” to reinforce Wells Fargo’s aggressive sales culture. These are people who perpetrated the fraud, but seem to have done so either at the behest of their managers or to reach unreasonable sales quotas to avoid being fired.