By Nupur Anand
NEW YORK (Reuters) -When Charlie Scharf took over as Wells Fargo CEO nearly six years ago, he said its culture was broken. On Tuesday, the Fed said the bank’s problems were mostly fixed as it lifted a $1.95 trillion asset cap imposed in 2018.
Scharf, 60, thanked Wells Fargo’s 215,000 employees after they carried out his turnaround plans, one of the biggest in the banking industry. Years after its fake-accounts scandal drew public outrage and billions of dollars in fines, Wells Fargo has convinced the Fed that it has corrected its failures and could be allowed to grow again.
“This has been a marathon and Charlie knew that all along,” said Chris Marinac, director of research at Janney Montgomery Scott. “He has been very deft at dealing with the regulators … his management style has been about keeping his eyes on the prize and not complaining.”
Wells Fargo chose Scharf as CEO in 2019 after a six-month search mired in controversy. His two predecessors, Tim Sloan and John Stumpf, were ousted in the wake of the sales practices scandal that erupted in 2016.
Scharf was thrust into the limelight after previously running BNY and Visa. Earlier in his career, he was a protege of JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who has called Scharf a “first-class leader.”
Soon after taking the helm at Wells Fargo, Scharf made sweeping leadership changes. He also reorganized its businesses, shrank its workforce and set about bolstering its processes to manage and control risks.
“We have transformed the management team and how we run the company,” Scharf said in a statement on Tuesday. “We are excited to continue to move forward with plans to further increase returns and growth in a deliberate manner supported by the processes and cultural changes we have made.”
The San Francisco-based bank’s shares have risen almost 8% this year as it cleared more regulatory hurdles. While executives have been cautious in their compliance updates, investors had become increasingly optimistic in recent months that the bank would finally emerge from its regulatory punishments.
“This is a pretty big win for Charlie Scharf,” said David Wagner, a portfolio manager and head of equities at Aptus Capital Advisors in Fairhope, Alabama.
“It will potentially increase the company’s overall valuation as it continues to trade at a discount relative to peers. It gives them another lever to equal the playing field from a growth perspective,” Wagner said.
Scharf is largely responsible for Wells Fargo’s cleanup, several analysts said.
The Fed’s decision “demonstrates the leadership path that Charlie Scharf has taken with this company to make sure it’s streamlined, more competitive and regulatory compliant,” said Mac Sykes, portfolio manager at Gabelli Funds.
Christopher Wolfe, managing director for North American Banks at Fitch Ratings in New York, said Wells Fargo would no longer be encumbered by the $1.95 trillion asset cap.
“It has a very strong franchise and the asset cap was holding it back,” Wolfe said. “There has been a lot of new leadership brought in, which was probably necessary to address regulatory shortcomings… Charlie Scharf, in particular, set about to methodically address regulatory concerns. While it took time to get there, the bank can now operate normally.”
Scharf has a bachelor’s degree from Johns Hopkins University and an MBA from New York University. He is a member of Microsoft’s board of directors.
Dimon, Scharf’s competitor and onetime mentor, also weighed in.
“Charlie and his team deserve a lot of credit – having worked extremely hard to resolve the company’s heritage issues,” Dimon said.
(Reporting by Nupur Anand in New York, Additional reporting by Saeed Azhar, Editing by Lananh Nguyen and Matthew Lewis)
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