Wells Fargo Had Among Worst Reputations of Any Company Ahead of CEO Resignation

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 30, 10:42PM EST · Published Mar 29, 6:25AM EDT

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Wells Fargo Had Among Worst Reputations of Any Company Ahead of CEO Resignation — © jeepersmedia / Flickr

Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE: WFC | WFC Price Prediction) CEO Timothy J. Sloan left the big bank unexpectedly. It has been criticized for sales tactics and legal violations since before he was appointed. He could not improve the bank’s reputation, which recently was listed as the worst of any U.S. company in a major study of corporate reputations.

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According to a 24/7 Wall St.’s Companies With the Best and Worst Reputations:

A recent technical glitch at Wells Fargo that prevented customers from seeing paychecks and direct deposits in their online and mobile banking accounts was a reminder of the recent troubles at the California-based financial institution. For more than two years, Wells Fargo was involved in a series of scandals that severely damaged its reputation. Wells Fargo was blamed for creating millions of false accounts, and it announced in 2016 it had discharged about 5,300 workers over a several-year period for this practice. The bank also confessed to charging customers for mortgage fees that they were not responsible for and for paying for car insurance they did not need. Wells Fargo also had to provide refunds to customers for pet insurance, home warranties, and other products they did not understand they were charged for.

Wells Fargo has run mea culpa commercials on television and in print ads in an attempt to restore customer trust in the financial institution. Even so, the bank has had trouble expanding its customer base in its corporate bank unit. It is also the lowest ranked financial institution on this list.

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Sloan also could not shake the perception that he had been part of Wells Fargo’s problems for years. Before he was made chief executive in October 2016, replacing disgraced former CEO John Stumpf, Sloan was the Wells Fargo chief operating officer and before that chief financial officer. He was, therefore, in senior management throughout the years when Wells Fargo experienced its worsening problems.

Sloan leaves the bank with a corporate reputation it may take years to repair.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.