After nearly five years as the top lawyer at insurance giant MetLife Inc., executive vice president and general counsel Ricardo Anzaldua has announced his plans to retire.

In a Thursday internal memo provided to Corporate Counsel, Anzaldua wrote to legal affairs colleagues that his last day as general counsel will be June 30, though he will continue to serve as a special legal adviser to MetLife chief executive officer Steven Kandarian through the end of this year. Senior vice president and chief counsel Stephen Gauster will serve as interim general counsel, Anzaldua, who joined MetLife in 2012, added in the memo.

“With all that we have accomplished together,” he wrote, “I feel that this is the right time for my next chapter in life.”

Anzaldua scored a major victory for MetLife in March of last year when a federal judge ruled against the government's designation that the company was “too big to fail.” Anzaldua, who made The National Law Journal's 2016 list of 50 Outstanding General Counsel, “designed and carried out our successful strategy to challenge the company's designation as a systemically important financial institution (SIFI),” Kandarian wrote in a separate memo to MetLife employees about the GC's departure, which was also provided to CC.

New York-based MetLife was the only company to challenge the too-big-to-fail status in court, Kandarian noted, and the “victory has preserved our ability to remain on a level playing field with others in the industry.”

MetLife plans to conduct both an internal and external search for Anzaldua's replacement, Kandarian added.

Prior to his role at MetLife, Anzaldua served as senior vice president and associate general counsel at The Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. and was a partner at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton.

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Contact Jennifer Williams-Alvarez at [email protected].