BOSTON: Officials of two large California public retirement systems said on Friday they are voting against nine of 15 Wells Fargo & Co directors up for election at the bank’s annual meeting next week, citing the bank’s phony-account scandal.
Leaders of the largest US state pension system, known as CalPERS, said in an e-mail it is voting about 13.9 million shares against the bank nominees, including its chairman, Stephen Sanger, ahead of the bank’s April 25 meeting in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida.
Wells Fargo is based in San Francisco.
“We believe these directors failed in their oversight responsibilities during the retail banking controversy at the company,” CalPERS said in a statement posted on its website.
In addition, CalPERS said some Wells Fargo director nominees have tenures of 12 years or more, “which we believe could compromise director independence.”
Separately, in a statement sent by a spokesman, the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, or CalSTRS, said on Friday it voted its 11.6 million Wells Fargo shares against the same group of nine directors.
According to the statement, “These board members bear responsibility for the failure of oversight of sales practices at Wells Fargo.”
The comments underscore the challenge facing the country’s third-largest bank, which has struggled to move past revelations that thousands of employees created as many as 2 million accounts in customers’ names without permission in order to hit lofty sales targets. — Reuters
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