Ron Orol writes in The Street:
A report on Wells Fargo’s (WFC) fake-accounts scandal commissioned by the bank’s independent directors is far less critical of the company’s board than two studies issued last week by influential shareholder advisory firms. Instead, the 113-page analysis released Monday of how employees working to meet the San Francisco-based bank’s ambitious sales targets created more than 2 million unauthorized credit card and savings accounts over a five-year period lays much of the blame with former CEO John Stumpf and former community banking chief Carrie Tolstedt.
According to the report board “members believe they were misinformed” (note use of the passive voice, a telling indicator of a failure to accept responsibility). ISS sees it differently:
A report days earlier from Institutional Shareholder Services, the most influential shareholder advisory firm in the U.S., was less forgiving of the board. The firm recommended that investors vote against 12 of Wells Fargo’s 15 directors, including the four members who oversaw the investigation.
Members of two board subcommittees “failed over a number of years” to provide sufficient risk oversight at the scandal-plagued lender, the ISS report said, and the board overall failed to implement an “effective risk management oversight process in a timely way” that could have spared the bank’s reputation.
In our view, the compensation plan alone, rewarding the number of transactions instead of the quality of transactions, is sufficient reason to replace the entire board.
Source: Wells Fargo Accounts Probe Lets Board Off Much Easier Than Proxy Firms – TheStreet
