In spite of the scandals upon scandals that Wells Fargo dealt with last year—and continues to deal with—the bank submitted a security filing Wednesday which revealed that CEO Tim Sloan received a 5% pay raise between 2017 and 2018, totaling to an $18.4 million salary.
Sloan’s compensation, which Reuters reports included a $2 million bonus for factors including the bank’s financial performance, was disclosed the day after he was grilled by Congress during his testimony claiming that Wells Fargo has become a better institution following the 2016 revelation that employees had opened more than two million accounts for customers without their consent.
In 2018, the bank was fined $1 billion to settle federal probes into mistreatment of customers, $575 million to settle with state-level claims, and was told by the Federal Reserve to stop growing.
Although Sloan, who has worked at Wells Fargo since 1987 and became CEO in late 2016 after the false account scandal broke, has been largely absolved of associated sins by Wall Street analysts and board members.
However, many Democratic politicians including Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren and California Congresswoman Maxine Waters called for his firing.
Upon hearing about Sloan’s pay raise, Waters didn’t mince words.
“Mr. Sloan shouldn’t be getting a bonus, he should be shown the door,” the Congresswoman said in a statement Reuters correspondent Pete Schroeder tweeted.
https://twitter.com/peteschroeder/status/1106236900430544901
“The Federal Reserve does not approve pay packages,” a spokesperson for the Fed told Reuters when asked about Sloan’s compensation package. “We expect boards of directors to hold management accountable.”
