BAC Bank of America Corporation

By Christina Rexrode 

Gary Lynch, a vice chairman at Bank of America Corp. and the former general counsel, is retiring.

Chief Executive and Chairman Brian Moynihan said in a note posted to employees Tuesday that Mr. Lynch would retire April 1. His departure marks what Mr. Moynihan and others hope is a turning point for the bank, which had long been saddled with heavy litigation and is now trying to pivot to the everyday work of growing revenue and income.

"Gary was an indispensable leader of our company during one of the most challenging periods for our industry and the global economy," Mr. Moynihan said in the note, a copy of which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Mr. Lynch joined Bank of America in 2011, after stints guiding Credit Suisse First Boston and Morgan Stanley through rocky relationships with regulators.

Previously, he had been a regulator himself, rising to the job of enforcement director at age 34 at the Securities and Exchange Commission. When he left the agency, The Journal called him "the most feared man in the financial markets," citing his investigations into the savings-and-loans scandals, insider-trading investigations against Michael Milken and others, and his lobbying for jail time for wrongdoers.

More recently, Mr. Lynch had grown critical of what he saw as overstepping by federal prosecutors and regulators in their postcrisis enforcement against the banks.

At Bank of America, he guided the bank through settlements including its 2014 deal with the Justice Department over the selling of shoddy mortgage securities. At $16.65 billion, it was the biggest settlement ever between the U.S. government and a single entity.

David Leitch, who was the top lawyer at Ford Motor Co., took over as Bank of America's general counsel last year. Mr. Lynch has stayed on as a vice chairman, focused on "international regulatory matters and shareholder outreach," the bank said in the memo. That included a shareholder battle where investors eventually voted to let Mr. Moynihan keep his chairman title.

Last year, the bank won a victory when an appeals court threw out another crisis-era mortgage fraud case brought against the bank by the Justice Department, over a program known as the "Hustle."

Mr. Moynihan said in the memo that Mr. Lynch had been "a trusted counselor to me, the management team, and the board."

Mr. Lynch said Bank of America was "on sound footing." "I look forward to closely watching its future performance with pride," he said in the memo.

Write to Christina Rexrode at christina.rexrode@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 14, 2017 14:49 ET (18:49 GMT)

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