© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan testifies earlier than a House Financial Services Committee listening to titled: “Holding Megabanks Accountable: An Examination of Wells Fargo’s Pattern of Consumer Abuses” in Washington, U.S. March 12, 2019. REUTERS/Erin Scott/
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By Daniel Wiessner
(Reuters) – Former Wells Fargo & Co CEO Tim Sloan filed a lawsuit on Friday accusing the financial institution of failing to pay him greater than $34 million after he resigned in 2019 amid a wide-ranging gross sales practices scandal.
Sloan within the lawsuit filed in California state court docket says Wells Fargo canceled inventory awards and withheld a bonus he had earned earlier than stepping down.
Wells Fargo in an announcement mentioned that “compensation decisions are based on performance, and we stand by our decisions in this matter.”
Sloan led Wells Fargo from 2016 to 2019, when he grew to become the second chief government to step down over claims that the financial institution had opened hundreds of thousands of unauthorized client accounts.
Wells Fargo in 2020 agreed to pay $3 billion to resolve felony and civil probes into the claims, and one other $1 billion earlier this 12 months in a lawsuit by shareholders. The financial institution admitted that between 2002 and 2016 it pressured workers to fulfill unrealistic gross sales targets that led them to open faux accounts.
The scandal drew scrutiny from shareholders and authorities officers and led the Federal Reserve in 2018 to order Wells Fargo to maintain its property under $1.95 trillion till it had improved its governance and threat controls. That cap continues to be in place.
In Friday’s lawsuit, Sloan mentioned he was not answerable for the scandal, which started shortly earlier than he took over as CEO, however was made a scapegoat by its board of administrators and compelled to resign.
“To this day, Wells Fargo has failed to identify anything Mr. Sloan did or failed to do that would justify its decision,” Sloan’s attorneys wrote within the grievance.
At the time he resigned, Sloan had mentioned that he determined to depart as a result of the deal with him had turn into a distraction inhibiting the financial institution from transferring ahead.
Sloan accused Wells Fargo of breach of contract and, together with the $34 million, is looking for unspecified damages for emotional misery and punitive damages.
Sloan’s San Francisco-based lawyer, David Lowe, has introduced quite a few high-profile employment lawsuits lately, together with a sequence of sexual harassment circumstances by feminine Tesla (NASDAQ:) Inc workers.
He additionally represented former Pinterest (NYSE:) COO Francoise Brougher in a lawsuit claiming she was fired for complaining about intercourse discrimination on the firm. Pinterest, which denied wrongdoing, settled the case for $22.5 million in 2020.