James Strother
Wells Fargo & Co. general counsel Jim Strother told attendees at a University of North Carolina School of Law conference that the bank is planning a “meaningful reduction” in its outside counsel spending.
According to a report from Retuers, Wells Fargo is undergoing a “companywide cost-cutting initiative” and “began reviewing these expenses about nine months ago and plans to start implementing changes in the next quarter or so.”
Strother, who is senior executive vice president and general counsel of the legal group for the fourth-largest bank in the U.S., was speaking Thursday at “The Banking Institute,” a two-day event presented by UNC Law’s Center for Banking and Finance.
During his talk, the Wells Fargo GC noted that his legal department plans to move more litigation work in-house and may bring in more staff to do so, according to Reuters. Like many U.S. banks, Wells Fargo has seen a steep increase in litigation following the 2008 financial crisis.
Strother’s comments follow a speech on Wednesday by Michael Bresnick, executive director of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force, in which he outlined DOJ priorities for investigating financial fraud, which include “the role of financial institutions in mass marketing fraud schemes—including deceptive payday loans, false offers of debt relief, fraudulent health care discount cards, and phony government grants, among other things—that cause billions of dollars in consumer losses.”
