IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/sajbmc/v8y2019i1p88-99.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Wells Fargo: Fall from Great to Miserable: A Case Study on Corporate Governance Failures

Author

Listed:
  • Ramachandran Veetikazhi
  • Gopinath Krishnan

Abstract

This case study examines corporate governance issues at Wells Fargo and Company. The bank was embroiled in controversies due to its cross-selling tactics and the enormous pressure the management exerted on the employees to ensure its success. Investigations by media, followed by statutory agencies, revealed the creation of fake accounts without the knowledge of the customers, sometimes forging their signatures. The CEO of the bank had to resign after facing a hostile US Senate Banking Committee hearing. Wells Fargo had to pay a fine of USD185 million to various statutory agencies. The board used clawback provisions on the CEO and the head of Community Bank. The latter was held responsible for the audacious sales culture which resulted in sales integrity issues. Wells Fargo seemed to have a perfect board, a lead director and a much acclaimed CEO, apart from seven board committees. External auditors were one of the ‘big fours’. This case is intended to stimulate discussion in the class on why corporate governance practices fail, despite a seemingly healthy governing structure.

Suggested Citation

  • Ramachandran Veetikazhi & Gopinath Krishnan, 2019. "Wells Fargo: Fall from Great to Miserable: A Case Study on Corporate Governance Failures," South Asian Journal of Business and Management Cases, , vol. 8(1), pages 88-99, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:sajbmc:v:8:y:2019:i:1:p:88-99
    DOI: 10.1177/2277977918803476
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2277977918803476
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/2277977918803476?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Spano Dominick, 2022. "New Public Management and ethics," HOLISTICA – Journal of Business and Public Administration, Sciendo, vol. 13(2), pages 83-92, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:sajbmc:v:8:y:2019:i:1:p:88-99. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.