Wells Fargo CEO's Stumble Puts Bank in Familiar State of Disarray

Added to the list in February was the potential for additional regulatory scrutiny of the bank's technology operations, following a days-long system outage.

Among the regulators running those probes is the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, whose mission is to ensure that banks "operate in a safe and sound manner." Now, one of the largest banks under its purview has an interim leader, Allen Parker, who was general counsel, and it's barely into the first phase of the CEO search.

"We don't know who's next and we don't know when," Capital Alpha Partners analyst Ian Katz said. "Perhaps all of the parties involved would've been happier if there was a clear indication of who's next in line."

Early Opposition

From the start, Sloan's appointment to the top job after John Stumpf's ouster drew criticism. Sloan had risen through the ranks over a three-decade career at Wells Fargo, and the bank faced internal and external investigations into millions of potentially fake accounts employees created to meet sales targets.

Critics including Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, had argued the company needed someone uncorrupted by the corporate culture that had allowed the scandals to develop.

Those criticisms never faded. Lawmakers summoned Sloan to Washington more than two years later, on March 12, for a hearing before the House Financial Services Committee.

Democrats and Republicans took turns grilling the CEO for more than four hours, with several expressing doubts that the long-time insider should be running the firm. Things got worse as the hearing ended: The OCC issued a rare public rebuke of Wells Fargo's progress.

The next day, Sloan met with senior OCC officials, according to two people familiar with the meeting. The conversation was tense, one of the people said.

"I thought it was very unusual, the aggressive approach that the OCC took in pushing this bank in the direction that it did," John Taylor, president of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition and an outside adviser to Wells Fargo, said in an interview. "I don't know what to make of it."

Piling on a week later was Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, who again said publicly that the central bank wouldn't lift its cap on Wells Fargo's growth until the lender's problems were addressed. Wells Fargo's breakdowns have "gone on and on," Powell said at a news conference on March 20.

Eight days after Powell's remarks, Sloan stepped down as CEO, president and board member, effective immediately.

Sloan and the board have said it was Sloan's decision to exit. He told investors on a call last week that "it has become apparent that the focus on me has become a distraction that impacts our ability to successfully move Wells Fargo forward."

Still, his departure hasn't stopped the drumbeat of criticism. Warren on Tuesday said in a Washington Post op-ed that she would introduce a new bill expanding criminal liability for corporate executives who oversee wrongdoing. Wells Fargo was her lead example.

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