Case Study Wells Fargo

Henry Wells and William Fargo became respected businessmen by transporting goods and becoming a bank. In 1849, with gold being found out west, many people needed to ship things cross-country. Henry wells and William Fargo took advantage of this opportunity. The two of them combined their company with several other pony expresses to become an unrivaled leader in transportation to the west (History.com Staff). Once the Continental Railroad was completed Henry and William had an easier time creating a monopoly on shipping goods to the workers and residents of the west (History.com Staff).

Today, Wells Fargo is widely recognized for its commitment to the Hispanic and Latino community. This commitment however, is not a recent phenomenon and dates back to before the turn of the century. Since its founding in 1852, Wells Fargo had encouraged team members to treat all customers with courtesy and respect. The once informal policy became company standard in 1888 when agents and managers were required to show “proper respect to all. Let them be men, women, children, rich or poor, white or black…”

Jones tried and played his cards right by using the system to his advantage and only going to small suburban branches, however red flags should still have risen at the suspicious activity occurring in the accounts. Jones clients believed that their money was being held in a trust account, in which Jones was handling money on behalf of his clients yet he held all of the money in his personal accounts this is something the bank was aware of. The fifth estate obtained documents of a bank memo proving that they were aware of Jones using his personal account for business, the matter was dropped (CBC,

Wells Fargo has been in business for over 160 years and was founded on March 18, 1852, by Henry Wells and William Fargo. The company opened its first office, in San Francisco, on July 1852. Wells Fargo served the West with banking needs, which included gold and paper bank drafts, and offered quick delivery of gold or other valuables. In1855, the first of many financial dilemmas took place when a drought made it impossible to mine for gold, and this caused almost 200 businesses in San Francisco to fail, but Wells Fargo didn’t fail, they prospered. In the early1860s, Wells Fargo acquired almost all the stage lines from the Missouri River to California, giving them a monopoly on transcontinental delivery services.

This implication made Wells Fargo a national brand. To this day Wells Fargo keeps growing and is becoming bigger in the banking industry. This was all affected by the competition between other banks and buying Wachovia National

1) -During the Great Recession Wells Fargo targeted black people and convinced them to take out subprime loans. Such actions lead to the result of Wells Fargo being sued in 2010 for discrimination and a year later settling the suit paying more than 174 million. -The early economy was built on slave labor. Not only did slaves build the Capitol building, but they built the White House too.

“The most polite and gentlemanly treatment of all customers, however insignificant in their business, is insisted upon. Proper respect must be shown to all- let them be men, women, or children, rich or poor, white or black- it must not be forgotten that the company is dependant on these same people for its business.” When Henry Wells was alive, there were 8,000 workers at Wells Fargo. Today, there are 150,000 or more employees at Wells Fargo. There are 6,000 branches and from 1990-1998, their stock went up 1,197% (Smith).

The terrorist attacks on our country that occurred on September 11, 2001 were, without a doubt, the most horrific and deadly in our history. In the aftermath of these attacks, the United States Congress moved quickly to pass legislation that untied the hands of law enforcement in an effort to make investigating terrorist organizations easier. On October 26, 2001, a mere 45 days after the 9/11 tragedy, Congress passed the USAPATRIOT (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism) Act. The overall purpose of the USA PATRIOT Act was: “To deter and punish terrorist acts in the United States and around the world, to enhance law enforcement investigatory tools, and for other purposes

As all this came to fruition, the bank was penalized with $185 million dollars in fines and other penalties by county and federal organizations (Blake, 2016). On top of getting slapped with millions of dollars worth of fines, Wells Fargo fired 5,300 employees that may have been involved in the scandal (Blake, 2016). Some of Wells Fargo’s top executives where asked to step down in court proceedings as well as in other meetings with federal agencies. There have also been several lawsuits filed against Wells Fargo by customers and former employees of the company that feel that they were wronged and bombarded with threats. Thankfully, this scandal did not affect most of Wells Fargo’s clients.

Her supervisor claimed that customers said they received poor customer service from Ms. Fortin. In 1994, the company decided to restructured its company finance and a new manager took over Ms. Fortin’s department. Staff reduction was part of the change; consequently, Ms. Fortin was one of the first employee to get laid off. Unfortunately, when the new supervisor decided to laid off Ms. Fortin, she had no prior knowledge of Ms. Fortin’s union activity.

Organizational Strategy and Objectives The foundation of Wells Fargo’s strategy is its focus on customers. The company’s strategy tends to drive the choices they make and also enable them to prioritize its efforts, differential from peers, and build a lasting value for customers, employees, communities, and shareholders. The diversified business model tends to provide the company with the stability and the strength as it assures communities and customers that it exists to serve them and also the future generations. The objectives of the company are to be the leader in financial services in areas of team member engagement, customer services and advice, shareholder value, innovation, corporate citizenship, and risk management (Wells Fargo n.d).

When it comes to the Ethical Decision Model, it does not just pertain to the employees who opened these accounts but also leadership who either failed to realize what was going on or decided to sweep it under the rug by just covertly firing some employees. Wells Fargo did take the first step in recognizing the problem but failed to define it, which explains why these unethical behaviors continued for so many years. When the corporation was initially aware of what was going on, they should have acted immediately and strategized a solution that would dilute the possibility of it occurring again. Instead of defining the problem, which would have foster, a proper solution but company decided to just terminate

Under this approach, an action is considered morally bad because of some characteristic of the action itself, not just because the product of the action is bad. Wells Fargo unethical practices demonstrates unethical behavior, under deontological ethical theories as its employees duty to operate in an honest and fair fashion , in providing services to the public. Wells Fargo codes of conduct does not permit sales practices of these sort, therefore the employees who participated in these practices made unethical decisions. Unfortunately there was a wrong-doing on a massive scale. The acts of unethical behavior were conducted by both the employees and management.

early stages of the scandal, the San Francisco based financial institution was investigated by the local Los Angeles City’s Attorney and California state officials. Preliminary investigations revealed the extent of the fraud and malpractice predated as far back as 2011. As a result, on September 8, 2016, federal investigators followed suit and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Agency opened an investigation against Wells Fargo and handed a $185 million penalty to settle the dispute. This settlement would become the largest fine levied in the agency’s history. Of the $185 million, $100 million comprised of fines from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), $50 million originated from the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office, and

Executive Summary Lehman Brothers were an investment bank involved in transactions worth billions of dollars and one of the most powerful investment banks in the world. Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008 following bad investment in the sub-prime mortgage market and used bad accounting practices called Repo 105 transactions to try and cover up the bad assets. This report sets out the use of the fraud triangle when describing the actions which led to the collapse. The pressure applied on the bank, the opportunity due to the lack of regulation to carry out the actions and the ability of the bank to rationalise their decision making.