Jane Sherburne is taking over the top legal job at Bank of New York/Mellon (BoNY forever in our hearts).
Her background after the jump – replete with lots of details you won’t find elsewhere.
Let’s break down Corporate Counsel’s summary
Since 2009, Sherburne has run her own legal practice. Before that she served as general counsel at Wachovia Corp. for about a year, before it was acquired by Wells Fargo Co. in 2009.
That’s a polite way of saying she was pushed out, which we’re not sure needs a euphemism in the first place. Her company was acquired. There can’t be two GCs. Buyer gets to choose and (almost always) keeps their own. Wells Fargo’s guy has been with the company since 1988 and in the top legal job since 2001.
Her new boss, Bob Kelly, the CEO of BoNY, used to be the CFO of First Union, where he was one of the key players in its merger with Wachovia, but that predates Sherburne’s run.
Previously, she was general counsel for the global consumer group at Citigroup Inc.,
Those were fun times at Citi. She was counsel on the Enron, WorldCom, and Parmalat debacles. She left in late 2008, right as the market meltdown was heating up, but it was just out of the frying pan, into the fire. Both Citi and Wachovia had nightmare runs during 08/09.
served as special counsel to President Clinton,
That’s an understatement. She was actually thick in the middle of a slew of interesting messes, especially Whitewater. Frontline interviewed her in 2000, and it’s an interesting read.
One awesome tale from that interview is that she was in the president’s study at the White House for the deposition by Ken Starr (who did his private practice turns at Kirkland & Ellis and Gibson Dunn) in the Paula Jones matter. Starr apparently forgot to swear Clinton in, which she calls a “first-year mistake.” According to another source, she was smirking about Starr’s gaffe, which prodded one of his staffers to pass him a note and correct his mistake.
and was a partner at Washington, D.C., law firm Wilmer Cutler & Pickering.
Which is where she met the eponymous, and late, Lloyd Cutler, who was her boss at the White House.
On the plus side, BoNY recently repaid its TARP money, so she’s probably not subject to any compensation restrictions. Her predecessor, Carl Krasik, didn’t make the bank’s CD&A in its proxy, so we don’t know how much he made, but it couldn’t have been more than about $5 million (that’s the lowest 2009 total comp reported among the CEO, CFO, and three-highest paid).
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