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By Jed Horowitz
NEW YORK, Feb 25 (Reuters) - Kevin McKay, who began his WallStreet legal career in 1978 at E.F. Hutton, will join BarclaysPLC's wealth and investment management division in theAmericas next month as general counsel, a company spokeswomansaid on Wednesday.
For the past 12 years McKay was general counsel of Dominick& Dominick, a New York City broker-dealer with fewer than 50brokers that was purchased in January by Memphis,Tennessee-based Wunderlich Securities. He was briefly chiefexecutive of the New York-based firm before the deal, andretained the general counsel title at Wunderlich.
"It's been a memorable journey," McKay wrote in a memo toDominick employees, adding that he accepted Barclays' offer"after much tortured thought."
Barclays' U.S. wealth business is small and recovering fromscandals that led to management overhauls at the British bankand in its wealth unit.
The bank's former chief executive, Robert Diamond, resignedin 2012 after Barclays agreed to pay British and U.S. regulators$453 million for rigging the London Interbank Offered Rate, thefirst bank implicated in the scandal. Mitch Cox, the head ofwealth in the Americas, left the bank in 2013 after an internalreport identified an abusive "revenue-at-all costs" culture inits U.S. business.
Two months before his departure, Cox told Reuters thatBarclays was investing $500 million to increase the wealthbusiness to 400 brokers from 250 by the end of 2014 and to focuson selling loans and exotic investments to people with at least$10 million of assets. It now has closer to 200 brokers.
McKay, 65, was general counsel of Prudential Securities whenit paid $371 million in 1993 to settle charges of improperlyselling limited partnerships to retail investors. From 1994 to2002, he was general counsel of Tucker Anthony Sutro, a periodwhen its management bought the firm from John Hancock Financial,took it public and subsequently resold it to Royal Bank ofCanada.
At Barclays, he will report to Helen Oldfied, the bank'sLondon-based global general counsel. He will be based in NewYork, reporting on a dotted-line basis to wealth managementAmericas head Tom Lee, who replaced Cox.
McKay, whose move has not been previously reported, did notreturn calls for comment. Wunderlich officials did notimmediately return calls to say whether he will be replaced.
He replaces Carlos Pelayo, a former Lehman Brothers andBarclays lawyer. (Reporting by Jed Horowitz; Editing by Paul Simao)
