WF CEO Gets Raise After Congressional Grilling

On Tuesday, lawmakers scolded Wells Fargo chief executive Tim Sloan for hours, telling him the bank had not done enough to rehabilitate itself after years of scandals about its practices toward customers. Some called for Sloan to be fired.

The next day, the bank’s board of directors gave Sloan a 5 percent raise, increasing his total compensation to $18.4 million. Of that, $2 million is an “annual incentive award” — in other words, a bonus.

Sloan’s pay is now 283 times the median pay of the bank’s more than 200,000 employees.

The bonus was based on Wells Fargo’s “financial performance” and Sloan’s “continued leadership on the Company’s top priority of rebuilding trust,” the firm said in its annual letter to shareholders. The company’s stock price fell 27 percent last year in a tough market, but its yearly profit rose to $22.4 billion compared with $22.2 billion in 2017, and the company’s board noted that Sloan had led a massive stock buyback program.

“Another raise for the Wells Fargo CEO in the midst of more scandals and fumbling Congressional testimony. This is not how fair and competitive markets are supposed to work,” Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.), who questioned the sincerity of Wells Fargo’s efforts to reform itself during Tuesday’s House Financial Services Committee hearing, said on Twitter.

Meanwhile, one of Wells Fargo’s chief regulators, the Federal Reserve, distanced itself from Sloan’s pay increase. “The Federal Reserve does not approve pay packages. We expect boards of directors to hold management accountable,” the agency said in a statement.