By Nupur Anand and Ateev Bhandari

(Reuters) -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 bank said in a statement the actions reflected the board’s desire to retain Scharf as the CEO and to recognize his leadership in transforming Wells Fargo.

When Scharf becomes the chairman, the board will appoint a lead independent director to maintain oversight, the bank said, without specifying when the change would take place.

“The special equity award is designed to acknowledge Charlie’s role in leading Wells Fargo through an unprecedented transformation, creating shareholder value and positioning the company for the future,” said Steven Black, the current chairman of Wells Fargo’s board.

The award will also help in maintaining Scharf’s compensation relative to top executives at peer financial institutions, the bank said in a separate regulatory filing.

Wells Fargo was released last month from a punitive, seven-year-long $1.95 trillion cap on its assets.

Scharf, 60, took the helm at Wells Fargo in 2019, vowing to repair its deeply entrenched problems from a fake-accounts scandal that erupted in 2016. The bank faced a public outcry and faced billions of dollars in fines.

The bank decided to split the chairman and the CEO roles in 2016 after the scandal erupted.

JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America are other major U.S. banks where the CEO is also the chairman of the board.

Influential proxy advisers have made calls in the past to separate the two positions to bolster corporate governance. The proposal was rejected by shareholders of Goldman Sachs and Bank of America last year.

(Reporting by Ateev Bhandari in Bengaluru and Nupur Anand in New York; Editing by Leroy Leo, Cynthia Osterman and Jamie Freed)