Wells Fargo, still struggling to overcome a series of scandals that has tarnished its reputation, on Friday named Bank of New York Mellon chief Charles Scharf as its new CEO.
Scharf, who also previously served as CEO of Visa, spent much of his early career as a close deputy to JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon, moving with the executive from Banc One and eventually becoming head of retail operations at the nation’s largest bank.
“Charlie is a proven leader and an experienced CEO who has excelled at strategic leadership and execution and is well-positioned to lead Wells Fargo’s continued transformation,” Wells Fargo board chair Betsy Duke said in a statement.
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Continued transformation is a must at Wells, whose reputation has been badly scarred by a number of scandals in recent years. In 2016, the company was fined $200 million for opening millions of fake accounts in order to meet sales goals. Two years later, it had to pay $1 billion to settle federal charges over consumer abuses related to its auto lending and mortgage businesses.
Former CEO and veteran Wells executive Tim Sloan, who once denied that the phony accounts were a problem, abruptly resigned in March.
Since then, the bank has struggled to find a new top executive. In a possible sign of the concession it had to make to get Scharf on board, he will be based in New York City, where he currently lives, rather than at the bank’s headquarters in San Francisco. He is due to start his new role in October.
