At least three of the largest banking companies — Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citigroup — are facing shareholder proposals for racial equity audits of their businesses. The activist firm CtW Investment Group and the Service Employees International Union pension fund want independent parties to grade not only the banks' philanthropic investments stemming from last year's nationwide reckoning on race, but their lending operations as well. CtW pointed to Wells Fargo CEO Charlie Scharf's comments last year about "a very limited pool of Black talent to recruit from" and a general lack of diversity within some bank executive hierarchies as reasons for examining their hiring practices as well, according to the proxy. "As investors, we know that it is not always wise to accept management's statements that everything is rosy," Dieter Waizenegger, executive director at CtW Investments wrote in a March 22 letter to BofA shareholders.