Barclays has appointed WilmerHale securities and financial services department chair Stephanie Avakian as its next group general counsel.
Avakian is replacing Stephen Shapiro, who has served as group general counsel since 2020. She starts at Barclays in May, LB understands, and will formally assume the role of group general counsel in early July, with Shapiro leaving the bank at the end of June.
Currently based in Washington DC, Avakian has extensive regulatory experience, having spent six and a half years at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) between 2014 and 2020, first as deputy director of the Enforcement Division, and subsequently as director, co-heading the division alongside former prosecutor Steven Peikin.
Avakian worked at the SEC as branch chief and counsel to the commissioner from 1995 to 1999, then joined Wilmer in 2000 as a partner. Following her second departure from the SEC in 2020, she has served as chair of WilmerHale’s securities and financial services department.
Outgoing GC Shapiro was appointed group company secretary of the FTSE 100 bank in 2017, before being appointed general counsel in 2020, following the departure of Bob Hoyt, who is now chief legal officer at HSBC. Before joining Barclays, Shapiro worked in-house at brewing and beverage company SABmiller, now AB InBev, before which he worked in the corporate and M&A department at Hogan Lovells.
Over the last year, the bank has completed a number of strategic transactions. In January 2025, it sold its Consumer Bank Europe business to Austrian bank BAWAG for €1.6bn, while later in the year, Barclays UK acquired Tesco Bank for £600m.
The bank has also had to navigate issues in recent years, including being fined £42m by the FCA last year for separate incidents of failing in its financial crime risk management.
This year has seen a number of legal leadership changes at some of the largest FTSE 100 companies. In January, financial services giant Legal & General appointed Maria Alvarez-Scott as GC, following the retirement of Geoffrey Timms, while in February Maria Varsellona departed her role as Unilever CLO to join Rolls-Royce, replacing outgoing GC Mark Gregory. Later in the month, mining group Rio Tinto announced the planned departure of CLO Isabelle Deschamps.
