Berkshire Hathaway’s Charlie Munger is defending Wells Fargo’s recently departed Chief Executive Tim Sloan — saying he never should have resigned.
“He’s a very good bank lender,” Munger said of Sloan, who stepped down in March amid a slew of consumer scandals.
“All these banks are using the government’s credit to get the money, and all of them will tend to make stupid loans. So when you get a good lender, that’s the last person you want to throw out,” Munger told the Wall Street Journal in an interview published Thursday.
“I would have kept Sloan myself, but nobody asked me.”
Sloan, 58, took over the San Francisco-based bank in October 2016 after his predecessor was pushed out amid revelations that the company had opened millions of fake accounts and credit cards in customers’ names. Additional scandals have surfaced since then, including revelations the bank charged hundreds of thousands of customers for auto insurance they didn’t need or want.
Sloan stepped down in March after at least three of the bank’s most powerful regulators expressed “no confidence” in his ability to turn the bank around, sources have told The Post.
Wells Fargo, which was recently downgraded by banking analysts for being rudderless, is searching for a permanent CEO.
In the Wall Street Journal article, Munger echoed comments from his Berkshire partner Warren Buffett that the next Wells Fargo CEO shouldn’t be from Wall Street.
“Not from Wall Street. We don’t like the Wall Street crowd that is making the damn decisions,” said Munger, who is also a big investor in banking giant Goldman Sachs.
Berkshire is Wells Fargo’s single biggest shareholder, with a stake of just under 10 percent. It owns 5.6 percent of Goldman.
Last month, the bank’s board said it wasn’t clear whether the bank would have a new CEO this year.