Wells CEO Was Underwater on Mortgage

Wells Fargo's first-quarter conference call yielded an interesting personal detail about the banking giant's CEO: He's been underwater on his mortgage, too.
By Lauren LaCapra ,

SAN FRANCISCO (

TheStreet

) --

Wells Fargo's

(WFC) - Get Report

first-quarter conference call yielded an interesting personal detail about the banking giant's CEO: He's been underwater on his mortgage, too.

Wells Fargo, the country's largest mortgage servicer behind

Bank of America

(BAC) - Get Report

, continues to face difficulty and

great costs to help troubled mortgage borrowers stay current. Borrowers in areas where home values have plummeted often owe more to the bank than the home is worth -- a status referred to as "underwater" or "upside down." With unemployment still hovering near 10%, many of them are also jobless.

"There

have been times in my life I have been upside down on a mortgage," CEO John Stumpf said Wednesday, "and if you give people a job, they want to stay in there, they pay."

Stumpf said that during his time as a loan collector, he found that "the big four" reasons for delinquency or default were death, divorce, unexpected medical costs, or unemployment.

"And lack of a job is the big one," he added. "...When they don't have any income and they are upside down, there is going to be a loss there."

But while Stumpf may have been sympathetic to borrower difficulties with loan-to-value ratios, he seems to have less in common with unemployed homeowners. The CEO took home the biggest pay package in the banking industry last year, of $21 million, exceeding annual salaries of the chiefs of

Goldman Sachs

(GS) - Get Report

, Bank of America,

Morgan Stanley

(MS) - Get Report

,

Citigroup

(C) - Get Report

or

JPMorgan Chase

(JPM) - Get Report

.

-- Written by Lauren Tara LaCapra in New York

.

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