LOS ANGELES _ Stephen Sanger, the chairman of Wells Fargo & Co., will step down from the board of the embattled bank effective Jan. 1 and will be replaced by former Federal Reserve official Elizabeth A. "Betsy" Duke, the bank announced Tuesday.
Two other long-serving directors, Cynthia H. Milligan and Susan G. Swenson, also will retire at the end of this year. They're the latest casualties in the bank's long-running scandal over sham accounts, which has spurred a wide-ranging shake-up at the San Francisco financial giant.
All three are among the company's longest-tenured board members, with Milligan having served for a quarter of a century. The trio received only tepid support from shareholders at the company's annual meeting in April, a sign of investors' dissatisfaction with the board's oversight of the bank amid an ever-growing list of misdeeds.
The bank in September reached a $185 million settlement with regulators, admitting it created as many as 2.1 million checking, savings and credit card accounts without customers' knowledge. The settlement led to an outcry and the resignation of Chief Executive and Chairman John Stumpf in October.
He was replaced as CEO by Tim Sloan, who remains on the bank's board. Sanger, a longtime board member, replaced Stumpf as chairman.
Since then, though, the number of potential sham accounts has grown and the bank has acknowledged or been investigated for a wide array of other bad practices, from forcing unneeded auto insurance policies on auto loan customers to charging improper fees on mortgage borrowers for bank-caused delays.
Other changes announced Tuesday include the appointment of a new board member, Juan A. Pujadas, a retired principal at accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, and the rejiggering of several board committees.
The bank's board said in a statement that the latest board moves were prompted by a self-evaluation conducted with the help of Mary Jo White, the former chairwoman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The bank's practice of opening unauthorized accounts was first exposed by a 2013 Los Angeles Times investigation.
