Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf, seeking to rebound from a disastrous appearance before the Senate, will once again attempt to quiet the outrage in Congress over his bank’s creation of fake accounts.
“I want to apologize for violating the trust our customers have invested in Wells Fargo,” Stumpf plans to tell the House Financial Services Committee at a hearing starting at 10 am ET, on Thursday, according to prepared remarks obtained by CNNMoney.
Stumpf’s planned speech is nearly identical to what he said to the Senate Banking Committee, last week. That hearing went poorly for Stumpf, highlighted by Senator Elizabeth Warren’s epic takedown of the Wells Fargo boss, that quickly went viral on social media and was featured on late-night television.
The key will be how Stumpf, CEO of Wells Fargo since 2007, handles tough questions about how a scandal of this size — as many as 2 million fake accounts and 5,300 fired workers — was allowed to happen for so long. Workers pin the blame on a Wells Fargo pressure-cooker culture and wildly unrealistic sales goals set by top management.
In addition to the hearing, the House committee is gathering thousands of pages of documents and plans to interview Wells Fargo executives.
“I will not hesitate to issue subpoenas. We will do what is necessary to get to the bottom of this,” Rep. Jeb Hensarling, the Republican chairman of the House committee, said on Thursday.
Wells Fargo has taken additional steps in recent days to try to quell the firestorm, including launching a new investigation by the company’s independent directors and scrapping the controversial sales goals earlier than previously planned.
Stumpf is also now forfeiting $41 million in stock awards, his 2016 bonus and his salary during the investigation.
Under pressure from Warren and others, Wells Fargo has also agreed to claw back $19 million in stock awards from Carrie Tolstedt, the executive who led the division that created the fake accounts and has since left the bank.
However, Tolstedt could still walk away with a fortune of $77 million of options and Wells Fargo shares she accumulated during her 27 years at the bank, a CNNMoney analysis shows.
