Stumpf’s Pay Cut Eclipsed by Fury as Yellen, California Join In

Wells Fargo & Co. Chief Executive Officer John Stumpf gave up $41 million to buy a reprieve from the bank’s widening scandal. Then it got worse. The company was battered anew by regulators and politicians throughout Wednesday, less than 24 hours after Stumpf agreed to forgo years of stock awards to quell public uproar over the bank’s unauthorized creation of customer accounts. Lawmakers called the CEO’s payment a first step. Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen vowed to probe a “disturbing” pattern of misconduct at big banks. California barred the firm from handling bond deals for the state. “Wells Fargo’s venal abuse of its customers by secretly opening unauthorized, illegal accounts illegally extracted millions of dollars,” California Treasurer John Chiang said in a news conference in San Francisco. “This behavior cannot be tolerated and must be denounced publicly in the strongest terms.”