Wells Fargo to Pay $79 Million to End Deferred Compensation Suit

Wells Fargo & Co. will pay $79 million to settle a class action covering more than 1,000 former financial advisers who said they were wrongly forced to forfeit deferred compensation when they left the company, the parties told a federal judge in South Carolina.

The Jan. 31 settlement resolves a lawsuit by former financial adviser Robert Berry, who said he gave up nearly $200,000 in deferred compensation when he resigned from the company in 2014. Berry says the plan’s forfeiture provision violated the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, while Wells Fargo maintained that the plan was largely exempt from ERISA ...