Professor Joo Comments for the San Francisco Chronicle on Wells Fargo Scandal

Professor Thomas Joo commented for the San Francisco Chronicle on whether Wells Fargo investors could have played a role in blowing the whistle on the bank’s fraudulent sales tactics, which included the creation of roughly 2 million fake checking and credit card accounts in the names of real customers.  Some have suggested that investors including the California Public Employees Retirement System should have been aware of what was going on.

Professor Joo said that wasn’t necessarily true. “Ideally, all investors should care about good corporate governance,” he said. “Institutional investors can do more than small retail investors. But how much they can do is not really clear. They have enormous portfolios and limited manpower. I don’t know if it’s realistic” for an investor to pay close attention to a holding that accounts for less than a percent of its portfolio, he said.

Joo, Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor at UC Davis School of Law, specializes in the areas of corporate governance and race and the law.