Around the house

Canadian bank Scotiabank has appointed Ian Arellano as its next general counsel from June 2018. He joins from law firm Torys where he is co-head of the firm's international initiative and a senior partner in its corporate transactions practice. Mr Arellano will join as executive vice president, legal, on 5 September, working  with Deborah Alexander, who has led Scotiabank's legal team as GC for 15 years until her planned retirement at the end of 2017.'Ian is a highly-talented legal expert and a seasoned global business advisor,' said Brian Porter, President and CEO at Scotiabank. 'He has worked closely with Scotiabank on many important transactions over the years, and brings a great familiarity with our global business model and key international markets. His experience and judgment make him an ideal fit to lead Scotiabank's legal team and we are delighted to welcome him to our executive team.' He will report in to Mr Porter and lead Scotiabank's global legal affairs, corporate secretary and corporate governance office functions and serve as a member of the Bank's Operating Committee as well as chairing the bank's Reputational Risk and Disclosure Committees.

Intellectual Ventures general counsel David Kris is leaving the company to return to the private sector. The technology company, which owns a large patent portfolio, also sees its president and chief operating officer Adriane Brown depart although continuing in an advisory role. The company has come under criticism for its large patent portfolio. Geekwire reports that IV is now planning to concentrate on developing startups.

Insurance company CNA has appointed Scott Weber as general counsel. Mr Weber will serve as a principal counsel to the CEO, senior management team and board of directors and will report to Dino Robusto, chairman and chief executive officer. Prior to joining CNA, Mr Weber most recently served as a managing director for Stroz Friedberg. In this role, he worked with clients to proactively help organisations better detect, prevent, manage and mitigate insider threats and security risks. He also worked for Opera Solutions, a prominent big data predictive analytics company, where he served as president of that company's subsidiary specialising in solutions and services to federal, state and local government clients, as well as commercial security professionals. He was previously a partner at Latham & Watkins and Patton Boggs. He also served as senior counsellor to the Secretary of the US Department of Homeland Security, providing advice on a wide range of legal, policy and operational matters.

Mark Naughton has joined US company Tiger Capital Group as senior general counsel. Mr Naughton will be responsible for structuring, negotiating and documenting transactions for each of Tiger’s divisions as well as supervising outside counsel. He joins Tiger from asset liquidation company Yellen Partners where he served as general counsel since 2015.  Prior to that, he was general counsel at Great American Group, working on major retail liquidations, including Circuit City, Target Canada, Linens n Things and Tower Records, as well as such industrial/wholesale cases as Collins and Aikman, Pacific Lumber and Eagle Foods. He also served as a partner in the restructuring group at Piper Rudnick (now Dla Piper) where he was involved in many large bankruptcy cases. 

UK alternative lending firm ThinCats has appointed Samantha Gray as general counsel. Ms Gray was previously a partner at Langley Solicitors, heading up its finances department which covered financial services, banking, insolvency and restructuring matters.