U.S. lender Wells Fargo said on Thursday its board of directors planned to appoint the lender's CEO Charlie Scharf as its chairman and to award him a one-time special equity grant of $30 million in restricted share rights and stock options.

The appointment rewards the executive who led the bank back from a scandal involving the creation of millions of fake customer accounts.

Major U.S. lender Wells Fargo said on Thursday its board of directors intends to appoint CEO Charlie Scharf as chairman. The move comes after Scharf led Wells Fargo to be released from a punitive, seven-year-long $1.

When Charlie Scharf took over as chief executive of Wells Fargo in fall 2019, the bank was less than two years into what would become a seven-year-long regulatory punishment that followed its fake-accounts scandal.

The decision to rejoin the CEO and chairman roles comes roughly two months after regulators removed an asset cap that had stunted the San Francisco-based company's growth for seven years.

Wells Fargo's (WFC) board intends to add chairman to CEO Charlie Scharf's role and awarded him a special equity grant of $30M in restricted share rights and 1.046M stock options, the company said on Thursday.

Charlie Scharf was named CEO and president of the bank in 2019 as the company faced challenges from its massive 2016 fake account scandal.