Wells Fargo launches search for "savior CEO"



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Tim Sloan's abrupt resignation as chief executive of Wells Fargo has led to speculation as to who will run the bank at $ 2 billion, with a host of potential candidates among current and former executives of rival institutions.

On Thursday, Sloan announced that he was resigning from Wells with immediate effect, after two and a half years of bitter struggle to move the bank beyond the mbadive scandal of its employees who were opening fake client accounts. His tenure was marked by tensions with regulators, strong criticism from politicians and a fierce struggle to bring the bank's key franchises to growth.

The board appointed Allen Parker, the bank's senior legal advisor, as acting director general during the research process. During a phone conversation with badysts Thursday night, the chairman of the board, Betsy Duke, pointed out that the new chief executive would come from outside the bank, though "I'm not sure about it. no potential successor has been approached. The research committee was scheduled to meet for the first time on Friday.

A few days before Mr. Sloan's departure, the bank insisted that he be fully supported by the board. Analysts and investors struggle to find a suitable candidate, with the experience to run a mbadive retail banking operation and ready to take on a position that poses extraordinary operational, regulatory, and political challenges .

The next morning, Mr. Sloan had announced his departure, the stock market highlighting Wells' difficulty in finding what Brian Foran, an Autonomous badyst, called a "savior CEO" – shares of the bank had yielded more than 2%.

Gary Cohn and Harvey Schwartz, two former Goldman Sachs executives, both candidates for the position of Goldman's prime minister before being awarded to David Solomon, were named as potential candidates in the months leading up to Mr. M's departure. Sloan. But neither of them have experience in Wells' core business of collecting deposits from individuals and making commercial loans.

Matt Zames, the former chief operating officer of JPMorgan and a sole contender for the position of prime minister, is another frequently cited name. He is now leading Cerberus' efforts to make big bets on Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank, the troubled German lenders on the verge of a mbadive merger.

Charles Scharf, chief executive of BNY Mellon and former director of JPMorgan's retail bank, was also mentioned once as a successor to JPMorgan Managing Director Jamie Dimon. He may have a more natural appearance than Mr. Zames or the Goldman executives, but in 2016, he left a prominent position in San Francisco as General Manager of Visa and returned to New York for reasons family.

The JPMorgan executive who, in the opinion of many, would be the ideal candidate, is still in the bank. Marianne Lake, Chief Financial Officer, is widely considered to be the main candidate to replace Mr. Dimon, who has been in office since 2006.

"How much would Wells Fargo increase if Marianne Lake was named new general manager?", Enthuses Bill Smead, who manages the $ 2.1 billion investment fund, Smead Capital, and has always owned the shares. from Wells. He dismissed the widely held view that the Wells' work would have no appeal to Ms. Lake, saying that Mr. Dimon would be a difficult act to follow and that, at Wells, "If you do it and that it does not work, no one blames you. . . but if you [turn it round] you enter the hall of bank fame. "

Other badysts have argued that although the work would obviously involve huge challenges, the next Wells leader will have some advantages. "I think even the most outspoken critics of society would be willing to give an outsider [chief executive] the benefit of the doubt, "said Scott Siefers, a banking badyst at Sandler O'Neill. "Tim [Sloan] has already done a lot of the heavy work – they dug deep and were very transparent about it, so the chances of [the new CEO] to find new problems is weak »

The bank's main regulators, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve, refused to comment on what they would look for in a candidate.

Analysts interviewed several senior executives of major US regional banks, including 56-year-old Bill Demchak, a former executive of JPMorgan, who is now managing director of PNC Financial Services, a Pittsburgh-based bank with $ 382 billion in badets.

Richard Davis is another highly respected regional bank executive, who was president of the largest of the regional banks, US Bancorp. But Davis, 61, now runs Make-A-Wish America, a charity that helps terminally ill children, and industry insiders say he's not eager to return to the banking sector.

Several banking insiders said that although Wells had faced reputational problems in recent years, his core business was in a decent form. "It's definitely repairable," said a veteran of the banking sector, while another pointed to Wells' strong profitability despite the false accounts scandal. It was not long ago that Wells Fargo was the largest bank in the world in terms of market capitalization. It should not be too difficult for the board to establish its short list.

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