Dive Brief:

• Wells Fargo named Steven Black its new chairman, replacing Charles Noski who is stepping down, the San Francisco-based bank announced on Tuesday.

• Noski, who served as a director since June 2019 and as chairman since March 2020, will remain as a director to help with the transition until he retires on Sept. 30, the bank said. Noski previously served as chair of the board’s audit committee and, until Tuesday, as chair of its governance and nominating committee, the bank said.

• Black, a board member and former JPMorgan Chase vice chairman, has more than 45 years of financial services experience and has served as co-CEO of Bregal Investments, a private equity firm, since September 2012.

Dive Insight:

"Chuck stepped into the chairman role at an important inflection point for the company — both in terms of our ongoing work to improve our controls and governance and in the early days of what became an unprecedented global pandemic," Wells Fargo CEO Charlie Scharf said in a statement. "I have greatly appreciated the wisdom and advice Chuck has provided to me during this challenging period."

Noski, the former chief financial officer at Bank of America, became chairman of the bank amid heightened political scrutiny last year, stemming from the bank’s handling of its 2016 fake accounts scandal.  

He replaced former chairwoman Betsy Duke in March 2020, after she, along with former board member James Quigley, resigned following a scathing House report that criticized the bank’s board and senior management for its failure to comply with consent orders issued by regulators in response to the bank’s widespread consumer abuses.

The country’s fourth-largest bank has been under scrutiny from lawmakers and regulators since 2016, when Wells Fargo employees were found to have created roughly 3.5 million fake accounts to receive sales-based incentives. 

Duke and Quigley’s resignations came just days before they testified in front of the House Financial Services Committee, regarding the bank’s response to the scandal. 

"Since I joined the board in 2020, Chuck has worked tirelessly to lead the board in support of the goal of making Wells Fargo the preeminent provider of financial services in the U.S.," Black said in a statement. "I am honored to continue the work and appreciate the support of my fellow directors in this role."