Wells Fargo CEO Charles Scharf. (Photo: Kyle Grillot/Bloomberg)
Wells Fargo is moving ahead with job cuts, about six weeks after news broke about plans that could affect tens of thousands of workers, according to a recent Bloomberg report.
"Starting in early August, we resumed regular job displacement activity," Beth Richek, a spokesperson for the bank, said in a statement provided to the news service.
"We are at the beginning of a multi-year effort to build a stronger, more efficient company," Richek said. "We expect to reduce the size of our workforce through a combination of attrition, the elimination of open roles and job displacements."
The job cuts follow the San Francisco-based lender's sale of hundreds of millions of dollars in assets earlier this year in order to meet the $1.95 trillion asset limit imposed on it by the Federal Reserve after its fake-accounts scandal, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
Like many other banks, Wells Fargo is having to sharply increase its loan-loss provisions. However, unlike most rivals, it is turning to job cuts as a means of improving its financial situation.
Details on Job Cuts
The initial cuts are set to affect employees whose positions were scrutinized before the pandemic, which put a stop to the planned layoffs, sources briefed on the situation told Bloomberg.
On a call with analysts in mid-July — after the bank reported its first quarterly loss since 2008 — CEO Charlie Scharf said: "We have a series of employees who've been told that their jobs will ultimately go away."
