Truist lures new chief legal officer from Ally Financial

Scott McIntyre/Bloomberg

Truist Financial in Charlotte, North Carolina, will install a new legal affairs leader later this month.

The $543 billion-asset bank announced on Wednesday that it has hired Scott Stengel away from Ally Financial to fill the chief legal officer position being vacated by Ellen Fitzsimmons, who plans to retire from Truist on Dec. 31. Stengel, who will be based in Charlotte and report to Truist CEO Bill Rogers, will oversee the company's legal affairs and government relations work. 

Fitzsimmons, who appeared on American Banker's Most Powerful Women to Watch list in 2019, 2020 and 2021, announced her retirement internally in October, the company said. In addition to being the head of legal matters, she is also head of public affairs, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Truist did not immediately respond to a question about who will be in charge of public affairs. 

Fitzsimmons spent 26 years at the freight railway giant CSX before joining SunTrust Banks in 2019, shortly ahead of the formation of Truist through the Atlanta company's merger with Winston Salem, North Carolina-based BB&T. At CSX, she was general counsel and head of public affairs.

Fitzsimmons' departure, and Stengel's hiring, coincide with significant changes at Truist, which has struggled to achieve certain efficiency and cost-savings goals that it set when it was formed.

Since September, the company has shrunk the size of its board of directors from 21 to 13 and reworked its 11-member executive management team into a 21-person "operating council." It has also named a new chief operating officer, announced the hiring of an ex-Wells Fargo executive to oversee wholesale banking and launched a $750 million cost-cutting program, which executives have said will result in significant job cuts through the first quarter of 2024.

The myriad changes are meant to improve financial performance, Rogers has said.

In his new role, Stengel will join Truist's operating council and serve as the board's corporate secretary, Truist said in a press release. Since 2016, he has been general counsel at Detroit-based Ally, and prior to that he held the same role at UMB Financial in Kansas City, Missouri.

Stengel is a former partner at the law firms King & Spalding and Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, where he focused on global banking, capital markets and government relations, the Truist release said.

Stengel will direct Truist's legal affairs and government relations strategy "at a critical time of rapid change in the industry," Rogers said in the release. "Scott is an entrepreneurial leader … [who] possesses the right growth-oriented mindset to navigate industry headwinds."

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Stengel is the third high-ranking Ally executive who has announced plans to leave the company since October.

Ally CEO Jeffrey Brown, who said he plans to leave  by early 2024, will become president of Hendricks Automotive Group. And Diane Morais, who leads Ally's consumer and commercial banking divisions, plans to depart on July 1, 2024. Morais was widely viewed as a potential candidate to replace Brown.

Upon Stengel's departure, Ally's deputy general counsel for corporate and securities, Isvara Wilson, has been named acting general counsel, Ally said in a regulatory filing.

"With a new CEO coming on board, we want to ensure that individual has the opportunity to select the right people to serve in critical roles across the company," Ally spokesperson Peter Gilchrist said in an email.