After some managers alerted their bosses that the numbers seemed suspicious, they said they were told to mind their own results. Some said they then watched their supervisors climb higher, or at least continued to hold senior posts within the division.
Wells Fargo’s three U.S. consumer-banking chiefs report to Tolstedt’s successor, Mary Mack.
Two of them built their careers in California: Lisa Stevens, 46, was promoted to run the state in 2009, and later expanded her territory to cover the Pacific Midwest region, which arcs eastward toward Ohio. She also heads small-business banking. Sotoodeh, 46, oversaw Los Angeles and Orange County before his promotion to lead other Southwest states from Texas.
The third region, the East Coast, was run by another former California chief, Laura Schulte, from 2009 until her retirement in 2014. Tolstedt moved her to Charlotte, North Carolina, just after Wells Fargo bought Wachovia Corp., giving her a key role in integrating the companies. Schulte said in an e-mail to Bloomberg that executives picked her “due to my extensive experience as a transition manager over several years and acquisitions, rather than anything related to sales practices.”
All-Stars
Still, she’s remembered by some staff for an internal sales promotion called “Schulte’s All Stars.” A 2010 copy of the list obtained by Bloomberg ranks managers by a mix of metrics, all gauging volume in different ways. Some were on track to be in the “Schulte Hall of Fame.”
Such lists were “scrubbed carefully so that any one of my winners did not include anyone who was known to be under scrutiny for sales practices,” Schulte said in her e-mail. She said she wasn’t focused primarily on sales numbers, and that she also ran “recognition events” tied to employee satisfaction, turnover, customer service and other measures of quality. Promotions, too, were based on a variety of criteria, she said.
Schulte also brought along a pair of California all-stars. Darryl Harmon became head of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee, and Shelley Freeman ran Florida.
Freeman, who previously oversaw metropolitan Los Angeles, soon tried to duplicate its sales-centric culture, former employees said. Every Monday, she wrote an e-mail to thousands of Florida personnel to encourage them to sell, sometimes describing the kind of lifestyle they might hope to achieve. She mentioned her Super Bowl tickets and buying an $800 pair of sunglasses at the beach, one former manager recalled. The messages went to tellers making $12 an hour.
Freeman now heads the bank’s consumer credit-card business. She said she couldn’t immediately comment when reached by phone, and later didn’t respond to messages.