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.
