State Street Hires Former Barclays General Counsel as Top Lawyer

State Street Corp., a Boston-based financial services giant, has hired Mark Shelton to be its new general counsel and corporate secretary.

Shelton, a former co-chair of the financial institutions group at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher who most recently was general counsel for Barclays Bank PLC, confirmed he started Jan. 1 at State Street. He succeeds the company’s retiring legal chief, David Phelan, who has been State Street’s top lawyer since mid-2020.

Shelton initially joined Barclays in New York in 2015 from Gibson Dunn, which hired him the year prior from Swiss bank UBS Group AG, where Shelton spent more than a decade. He served as Americas general counsel and global head of investigations at UBS, which last year acquired Credit Suisse.

State Street, which in January 2019 announced it would lay off 1,500 workers to cut costs, disclosed last month that it would shed another 1,500 jobs prior to year’s end in an effort to streamline its operations.

State Street’s outgoing legal chief Phelan didn’t respond to a request for comment. He’s spent nearly 20 years with the company that hired him in 2006 from his role as a senior partner at what is now the law firm Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr. Shelton also previously was a securities regulation and enforcement partner at the firm, which has roots in Boston.

Phelan was not among State Street’s six highest-paid executives during fiscal 2022, per its most recent proxy statement.

He owns $5.5 million in company stock, per Bloomberg data. Securities filings show that Phelan sold off nearly $1.3 million in State Street stock last year. He also had a son of the same name who worked for State Street and earned less than $250,000 in total compensation from the company in 2021.

Barclays hired Crystal Lalime last year from Credit Suisse Group AG to replace the outgoing Shelton as the London-based company’s Americas legal chief and the lead lawyer for its investment banking operation.