A judge has denied Wells Fargo's request to dismiss a class-action lawsuit that claims the mega bank mismanaged its more-than-$40 billion 401(k) plan.
Brought on behalf of participant Yvonne Becker in U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota, the class-action lawsuit asserts that some high-level executives at Wells Fargo—who were named as the retirement plan's fiduciaries—selected and retained 17 Wells Fargo proprietary funds, many of which performed below the benchmark that the bank had picked "as an appropriate broad-based market index for each Wells Fargo Fund."
Becker further alleges that the Wells Fargo Funds included "newly launched funds that lacked a performance history necessary to evaluate them, and that the Wells Fargo Funds charged greater fees than similar non-proprietary funds."
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Melanie Waddell
Melanie is senior editor and Washington bureau chief of ThinkAdvisor. Her ThinkAdvisor coverage zeros in on how politics, policy, legislation and regulations affect the investment advisory space. Melanie’s coverage has been cited in various lawmakers’ reports, letters and bills, and in the Labor Department’s fiduciary rule in 2024. In 2019, Melanie received an Honorable Mention, Range of Work by a Single Author award from @Folio. Melanie joined Investment Advisor magazine as New York bureau chief in 2000. She has been a columnist since 2002. She started her career in Washington in 1994, covering financial issues at American Banker. Since 1997, Melanie has been covering investment-related issues, holding senior editorial positions at American Banker publications in both Washington and New York. Briefly, she was content chief for Internet Capital Group’s EFinancialWorld in New York and wrote freelance articles for Institutional Investor. Melanie holds a bachelor’s degree in English from Towson University. She interned at The Baltimore Sun and its suburban edition.
