Four members of Wells Fargo’s board of directors, including its three longest-serving directors, will retire next month as the bank continues to clean up from its troubles of the last 18 months.
The bank announced this week that John Chen, Lloyd Dean, and Enrique Hernandez, each of which has served on the Wells Fargo board for at least 10 years, will retire at the company’s 2018 annual shareholder meeting, which is scheduled for April 24, 2018.
Also set to retire in April is Federico Peña, who was originally scheduled to retire next year.
Hernandez, who is the chairman, president and CEO of Inter-Con Security Systems, has served on Wells Fargo’s board since 2003. According to his Wells Fargo bio, Hernandez serves on the board of Chevron and is chairman of the board of McDonald’s.
Dean, who is president and CEO of Dignity Health, joined Wells Fargo’s board in 2005. Dean also serves on McDonald’s board.
Chen joined the board in 2006, and is executive chairman and CEO of BlackBerry. Chen also serves on the board of The Walt Disney Company.
Peña has served on Wells Fargo’s board since 2011. He is also a senior advisor to the Colorado Impact Fund and served as secretary of the Department of Energy and secretary of the Department of Transportation under President Bill Clinton.
Wells Fargo’s board currently has 16 members, but with these retirements, the bank will move to a 12-member board for the time being.
The moves come on the heels of the Federal Reserve sanctioning Wells Fargo for its various issues over the last year or so, including overcharging mortgage customers and opening fake accounts.
At the time of the Fed announcement, Wells Fargo announced that four of its board members would be leaving this year as part of a "planned refreshment" of its board, a move accomplished by this announcement.
These departures are hardly the only changes to the bank’s board since the fake account scandal first broke.
Last year, the bank named Elizabeth Duke, a former member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, to serve as its new chair.
Duke took over as the bank’s vice chair when Stephen Sanger replaced John Stumpf as the bank’s chair.
Sanger ascended to the position of leadership after Stumpf resigned as the bank’s chief executive officer and board chairman in the wake of the bank’s fake account scandal.
Sanger had served on Wells Fargo’s board for more than 14 years but retired last year as well.
At the same time that the bank announced Duke as it new chair, it also announced that two other long-serving members of Wells Fargo’s board will be retiring –Cynthia Milligan, who joined the bank’s board in 1992, and Susan Swenson, who served on the board since 1998.
Now, much of the old guard of Wells Fargo’s board is gone or soon to be gone.
“On behalf of the entire board, I want to thank John, Lloyd, Rick, and Federico for their many contributions and service to our board and company,” Duke said in a statement.
“We respect their decisions to retire and know our board benefited greatly from their expertise and perspectives during their many years of service. We wish them well in the future,” Duke added. “The leadership and insight that these directors brought to the board and its committees, including the board’s human resources, finance, risk, and corporate responsibility committees are just some of the many ways they served our board with distinction over the years.”
[Update: This article is updated to add clarity around Wells Fargo's announcement of its board members' departures.]
