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Wells Fargo cuts West Des Moines jobs, sheds 500 workers since 2022
Wells Fargo & Co. cut 25 employees in the Des Moines metro last week in its second round of local layoffs in as many months.
According to a disclosure to Iowa Workforce Development, the bank laid off employees based at its south Jordan Creek Parkway campus in West Des Moines on May 15. The layoffs follow the company’s cuts on April 18, when Wells Fargo laid off 78 workers at three downtown Des Moines offices.
Company spokesperson Mike Slusark did not answer questions about which divisions executives targeted with the latest layoffs. He also declined to say specifically why the company’s leaders decided to lay off the workers.
“We regularly review and adjust staffing levels to align with market conditions and the needs of our businesses,” Slusark said in a statement. “We work very hard to identify opportunities for employees in other parts of the company so we can retain as many employees as possible. Where it’s not possible, we provide assistance, such as severance and career counseling.”
The cuts come four months after Wells Fargo leaders announced that they would scale back their mortgage business, which the bank has centered in the Des Moines metro. The home lending business has slowed down as the Federal Reserve began increasing interest rates last year, and Wells Fargo has also had to compete with more aggressive non-bank lenders like Rocket Mortgage and United Wholesale Mortgage.
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Wells Fargo has been on a local layoff spree since last April, cutting about 500 employees in central Iowa. The company remains the metro’s largest private employer, with about 11,000 workers in the region.
Wells Fargo agreed to pay $1 billion settlement in class action lawsuit
The cuts came as the bank agreed to settle a class action lawsuit from investors for $1 billion, a figure that the plaintiffs’ lawyers said was among the largest ever for a securities class action lawsuit. A judge still needs to approve the settlement.
Investors — including pension funds in Louisiana, Mississippi and Rhode Island — sued the bank over statements executives made about their progress under federal consent orders. Wells Fargo has operated under orders that cap how many assets the bank can manage since investigators learned of a fake accounts scandal, in which employees created sham accounts for customers between 2010 and 2016 to hit performance targets.
The investors alleged in a 2020 complaint that the bank’s executives misled them by saying publicly that federal regulators were satisfied with the bank’s progress under a series of consent orders. In March 2020, the House Financial Services Committee found that Wells Fargo was not in compliance with the consent order and “woefully” short of making corporate changes.
“This settlement will help compensate hundreds of thousands of investors – state employees, nurses, teachers, police, firefighters and others – whose critical retirement savings were impacted by Wells Fargo’s fraudulent business practices,” Steven Toll, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said in a statement last week.
More:Wells Fargo agrees to pay $1B to settle class action lawsuit tied to fake accounts scandal
Wells Fargo spokesperson Sunny Rodriguez told USA Today last week, “While we disagree with the allegations in this case, we are pleased to have resolved this matter.”
Wells Fargo in the midst of moving out of Des Moines
An executive announced in January that most Wells Fargo employees will leave downtown offices at 800 Walnut St., 801 Walnut St. and 206 Eighth St. Those employees will move to the company’s south Jordan Creek Parkway campus in West Des Moines.
The company has put the three buildings on the market. Five months since the announcement, though, Wells Fargo leaders have continued to decline to share how many workers will be leaving the city’s core as a result of the shift.
Asked for a timeline of the move, company spokesperson Slusark said in an email Monday, “Groups of employees are being moved over the course of this year and that process has started.”
Tyler Jett is an investigative reporter for the Des Moines Register. Reach him at [email protected], 515-284-8215, or on Twitter at @LetsJett. He also accepts encrypted messages at [email protected].
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