According to Fortune, “Executives sought to drive growth by putting undue pressure on its employees to hit sales quotas, and many employees responded by fraudulently opening customer accounts. In most cases these accounts were closed before customers noticed, but in other cases consumers were hit with associated fees or took hits to their credit ratings. The bank was forced to return $2.6 million in ill-gotten fees and pay $186 million in fines to the government. But the biggest hit Wells Fargo will take is to its reputation, as the media and government officials spent much of the year slamming the bank for its fraud,” (Mathews). The victims being the unknowing customers who saw their credit ratings plummet and faced steep financial fees, that were brought about through no fault of their own.
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.
While the organization blatantly made mediocre managerial decisions, such decisions merely reflect the competitive business environment the financial services industry has grown accustomed to. When it comes down to it, the employees of Wells Fargo did what most individuals would do when faced with the terrifying reality of potential unemployment. In the fast paced, money driven, cut throat environment that is known as twenty first century Corporate America, the lines often blur in terms of ethical decision making. Wells Fargo deserves to receive the blame in this situation in order to demonstrate that the big business taking advantage of the individual is intolerable and that the consumer demands a change. Modification of organizational behavior,
Ms. Tolstedt decided to retire in July, 2016 when the investigation was moving toward finality. Wells Fargo allowed Ms. Tolstedt to retire and take with her around $125 million in stock options while around 5300 of her former employees are getting fired for their part of the fraudulent activities. The author feels Wells Fargo did an injustice to society and Ms. Tolstedt’s former employees by allowing her to retire and take all of her stock options with her, since she should have been
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
On the contrary, Wells Fargo lost millions of dollars by allowing unethical practices to continue for years. In doing so Wells Fargo lost consumer
Wells Fargo commenced an extensive television advertisement campaign to reestablish confidence and its public image. It intensified its ads in newspapers and established a presence in major sporting events showcasing its signature horse-drawn carriage ad. According to Mark Folk, a Wells Fargo spokesman, “the advertising reiterates Wells Fargo’s commitment to customers and the steps we are taking to move forward and make things right.” Class action lawsuits have erupted across the country from enraged customers; however, these have been quickly struck down due to mandatory arbitration clauses Wells Fargo customers are required to sign as part of new account opening agreements. Wells Fargo has filed motions for courts to defer any class action lawsuits to arbitration since these arbitration agreements are typically binding and are resolved on a case by case
The company we know today as Wells Fargo began its’ long history in March of 1852 in New York City when Henry Wells and William G. Fargo joined with several other investors to start a shipping company. This was not the first time these two had worked together, however, or the first shipping company that these two men had been founders of. They were both pioneers in the Express industry and used these skill to open their own shipping and banking business.
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.
BP, with the assistance of government agencies and others, worked together to manage the spill and mitigate its impact on the environment and human health by eradicating and dispersing the oil offshore, and by executing strategies to preserve the seashore and clean up oil that came ashore. Besides, there is still 28 percent of oil in the sea (Bryant, 2011). Every disaster is followed by fatalities, however, this disaster had double or even triple number of losses than any other disasters. The Gulf oil spill not only affected sea and marine life, but also humans who were used to live on the coastline.
Valeria De Leon Mr. Mays English III 11 November 2015 Thesis Statement On April 20, 2010, the oil-drilling rig Deepwater Horizon exploded due to equipment failure and sank, spilling over 200 million gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico in the course of three months. The BP oil spill was the worst environmental crisis America has ever faced, damaging coastal habitats, the environment and the economy.
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.
They claimed "the company had coached clients on improper tax workarounds that cost the agency as much as $712 million in wrongly awarded refunds"
It would seem the government did not fail to prosecute the executives responsible for the mortgage fiasco. “The Justice Department has an ethical obligation not to bring cases unless they have a better than 50% chance to convict. They argued the merits of each case and always came up short of the evidence necessary for a successful conviction. Greed is not a crime.” (Henning, 2015) The Assistant attorney general Lanny Breuer was not confident in his ability to prove criminal intent and therefore has not filed charges.
Drilling into Disaster: BP in the Gulf of Mexico Gulf of Mexico is one of the valuable place in which it has variety of marine life, such as fish, shrimp and other species The issues of incident on spill oil should be on concerned as it leads to this disaster for human being and environment. The case is discussed how BP company responses. It means how its board and management accountability, corporate responsibility, risk management, code of conduct and whistleblowing, compensation practices, and stakeholder communications react on this disaster. With regard to the disaster, BP CEO should have behaved appropriately because he should have responsibility on his job and should give his employees a better solution better than not saying anything. The problem was still there even BP change CEO to Dudley.