Wells Fargo discloses SEC investigation

NEW YORK — Wells Fargo has confirmed that the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating its sales practices, and revealed that it has almost doubled to $1.7 billion the amount set aside to deal with its legal problems.

The bank said in a regulatory filing Thursday that a myriad of local, state and federal government agencies are investigating Wells for its sales practices scandal. That’s on top of class-action lawsuits filed by investors, its former employees and customers.

Due to its mounting legal woes, Wells Fargo is also boosting the amount of money it has set aside for legal expenses from the $1 billion it had set aside as of June 30.

The San Francisco-based bank has been under fire since it was discovered that in order to meet extremely lofty sales goals, employees opened as many as 2 million bank and credit card accounts without customer authorization. The company had also fired more than 5,000 employees, the vast majority of them lower-level workers.

The biggest scandal in the bank’s 164-year history forced the abrupt retirement last month of its CEO, John Stumpf, after the board reclaimed $41 million in compensation. The company named as its new CEO Tim Sloan, who has made fixing the bank’s reputation his top priority.

Sloan held an “all-hands” meeting with employees last month where he apologized directly to the bank’s workers. Wells has also launched an advertising campaign to apologize to customers. The bank is also fighting off angry politicians who have make an example of Wells Fargo in a tense election year.

“I know there is a lot we need to get right and team members throughout the company are focused on doing the hard work that is necessary to restore trust in Wells Fargo,” Sloan said at a conference in Boston on Thursday.

Sloan said Wells will also now provide updates on the activity inside its branches on a monthly basis.

Shares rose 19 cents, or 0.4 percent, to $45.43 in midday trading Thursday.