Toyota Financial Services Promotes Farrell to Legal Chief

Toyota Financial Services will promote general counsel Ellen Farrell to group vice president and chief legal and compliance officer, effective Jan. 3.

Farrell becomes the first person to hold the title of chief legal and compliance officer at TFS and will oversee its U.S. operations.

She joined Toyota Motor North America Inc., sister company of Toyota Financial Services, in 1999 as counsel. During her time at the company, Farrell has also worked for Toyota Motor Sales on its dealer relations.

“I got to understand a lot of the operations and how pieces fit together,” she said. “When you come in as an outside lawyer, that’s just a wonderful luxury to have to understand how the business works.”

Toyota Financial Services, created in 1982, is the service mark used by Toyota Motor Credit Corp. The company offers financing services to Toyota customers, including corporate clients like Bass Pro Shops. It reported $622 million in net profit for the quarter ending Sept. 30.

Holland & Knight has represented Toyota Motor Credit in nearly 27% of its federal litigation since 2007, according to Bloomberg Law data. Reed Smith has appeared on behalf of the company in more than 17% of its cases, followed by Sheppard Mullin at just over 9%.

Farrell’s promotion was announced as part of a series of executive changes at Toyota North America and Toyota Financial Services. She said the promotions realigned different functions across the company and expanded individual responsibilities.

The other announced promotions included current financial services chief information officer Vipin Gupta to group vice president and chief innovation and digital officer, and current group vice president of sales, product, and marketing Alex Hagey to financial services chief operating officer.

Toyota is one of the largest automobile makers in the world. The Japanese company is working to meet demand for more electric vehicles and recently announced a $1.29 billion U.S. battery production center in North Carolina.

The global semiconductor shortage has dampened Toyota’s production by as much as 26%. The company produced just over 627,000 cars in October, down from more than 845,000 in the same month the year before.