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Wells Fargo CEO Search Drags On: Two Top Candidates Take a Pass

Good morning. Here are selected and unedited excerpts from a current Wall Street Journal article:
Wells Fargo & Co. is having trouble getting top bankers interested in its open chief executive officer job.

The bank’s board has approached a small group of top candidates, including JPMorgan Chase & Co. consumer banking chief Gordon Smith, PNC Financial Services Group Inc. CEO William Demchak and former U.S. Bancorp chief Richard Davis, according to people familiar with the matter. Messrs. Demchak and Davis took a pass on potentially replacing Timothy Sloan, who resigned in late March, the people said.

Wells Fargo continues to pursue Mr. Smith, who is JPMorgan’s co-chief operating officer, but he has told confidants that he is reluctant to take the job and is likely to stay at JPMorgan, some of the people said.

Running the fourth-largest bank in the U.S. is one of the biggest jobs in the business, but it is not a universally appealing one. Wells Fargo’s new CEO will have to juggle fixing problems in Washington, reviving key businesses and rehabilitating a corporate reputation damaged by many problems that came to light following the bank’s 2016 fake-account scandal.

Any professional glory to be earned turning around the bank is likely years away. Wells Fargo has a long to-do list from regulators and is operating under an unprecedented growth cap imposed by the Federal Reserve in early 2018.

Comment: It's hard to understand why Wells Fargo would have a problem finding a qualified leader who operates with at least a minimal degree of ethical standards.
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