Wells Fargo CEO Abruptly Quits

Wells Fargo's CEO Tim Sloan stepped down Thursday, after a rocky tenure during which the deeply troubled bank dealt with a seemingly unending wave of scandals. Sloan said in a statement he will give up his roles as CEO, president and a member of the bank's board of directors effective immediately, the AP reports. He will retire from the bank completely on June 30. Sloan led the banking giant for less than three years. A longtime insider, Sloan was chosen to replace outgoing CEO John Stumpf, who resigned in October 2016 after Wells Fargo employees were found to have fraudulently opened millions of bank accounts in order to meet the company's unrealistic sales goals. While Sloan sought to bring Wells back from the accounts scandal, new improprieties repeatedly came to light.

The bank was found to have tacked unnecessary auto insurance onto the accounts of car loan customers. Tens of thousands of customers were unable to afford the payments and, in many cases, got their cars repossessed. The bank also foreclosed on the homes of hundreds of customers accidentally. Those are just two examples in what became a game of scandal "whack-a-mole" at the nation's second-largest bank. Federal regulators lost patience with Wells Fargo's continued bad behavior and inflicted harsh punishments. Wells had to pay a $1 billion fine to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. But more importantly, the Federal Reserve stepped in and handcuffed Wells' ability to grow its business until the bank could prove that it had gotten its house in order. The bank has also drawn the ire of politicians on both sides of the aisle; Sen. Elizabeth Warren tweeted in response to Sloan's announcement, "About damn time. Tim Sloan should have been fired a long time ago." (More Wells Fargo stories.)