As a consequence, Wells Fargo opened millions of unauthorized or fraudulent accounts. Under this pressure, employees met inflated sales targets by making fraudulent statements, stealing identities, and falsifying bank records to open accounts of low or no value to customers that the employees knew customers did not need and would not use. The Community Bank chose to use the second strategy to meet sales goals, and implemented a volume-based sales model under which managers pressured employees to sell additional products to existing customers, regardless of their need. The ratio could be increased by creating new customer accounts and selling products, or by selling more products to existing customers. In presentations and conferences, it informed investors and analysts that its business-growth strategy centered on increasing this ratio. In its SEC filings, Wells Fargo published a “cross-sell metric,” a ratio of numbers of accounts and products per retail bank household. In the Wells Fargo Action, the SEC found that, from 2012 through 2016, Wells Fargo had “misled investors regarding the success of the core business strategy of the Community Bank operating segment, its largest business unit.” 3 Department of Justice.” 2 (“Wells Fargo Action”). On February 21, 2020, the SEC filed a settled administrative proceeding against Wells Fargo and ordered a payment of $500 million from the bank to the bank’s shareholders as part of a “combined $3 billion settlement with the SEC and the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California against her, claiming that Tolstedt had violated “the antifraud provisions of the federal securities laws” and seeking to have a “permanent injunction, civil penalties, disgorgement with prejudgment interest, and an officer-and-director bar” imposed against her. The SEC filed a civil complaint in the U.S. (“Wells Fargo”) with actions against two senior officers-former Chairman and CEO of Wells Fargo, John Stumpf, who agreed to an SEC administrative cease and desist order, and $2.5 million in penalties, and former head of Wells Fargo’s Community Bank (“Community Bank”), Carrie Tolstedt, who did not settle with the SEC. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC” or “Agency”) followed up its February 2020 action against Wells Fargo & Co.
0 kommentar(er)
