(Bloomberg) -- Charles Munger, whose Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and Daily Journal Corp. are shareholders in Wells Fargo & Co., isn’t a fan of the work arrangement set up by the bank’s new chief executive officer.
“That’s outrageous,” Munger, 96, said Wednesday in an interview when asked about Charlie Scharf’s choice to live in New York while running the San Francisco-based lender. “Anybody should move for a big job like that.”
The bank named Scharf as CEO in September after a six-month search and agreed to let him remain back east. In addition to running one of the biggest U.S. lenders, Scharf is pushing to help the firm emerge from three years of scandals and regulatory punishments.
Scharf, the former CEO of Bank of New York Mellon Corp. and Visa Inc., defended his work location in September, saying that he’s accustomed to spending “very little time” in the office while doing his job. “I don’t think anyone would ever say in the places I’ve worked that I’ve not been present,” he said. “It’s just the opposite.” A Wells Fargo spokesman declined to immediately comment on Wednesday.
Scharf won the Wells Fargo job after two previous CEOs were felled by consumer scandals that have dogged the bank since late 2016. The company has paid billions of dollars in fines and legal costs and is under a Federal Reserve order limiting its growth.
Munger, chairman of publisher Daily Journal, said he was dismayed that previous Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan was forced to step down amid criticism last year.
“He was not responsible for the mistakes that were made” Munger said in an interview following Daily Journal’s annual meeting in Los Angeles.
Munger, a California resident, is a vice chairman at Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire. The conglomerate run by Warren Buffett is the largest shareholder in Wells Fargo, with a stake valued at about $18 billion. Daily Journal also owns shares in the lender.
To contact the reporter on this story: Katherine Chiglinsky in New York at kchiglinsky@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Michael J. Moore at mmoore55@bloomberg.net, Dan Reichl, Josh Friedman
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