For Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan, it was a virtual no-win scenario.

Summoned by the House Financial Services Committee to testify about the San Francisco-based lender’s ongoing regulatory issues, he contended with repeated suggestions from Democrats, who now control the chamber, that Wells Fargo has become “too big to manage,” a thinly veiled reference to the 2008 financial crisis, when bailed-out banks were criticized as “too big to fail.”