BankUnited Hires New General Counsel
Michael Alford will be based in Miami and oversee BankUnited's legal and compliance functions. The bank operates in Florida and the New York metropolitan area and had $32.7 billion in total assets.
June 17, 2019 at 03:05 PM
3 minute read
Michael Alford, general counsel with BankUnited. Courtesy photo.
BankUnited Inc., a national bank headquartered in Florida, has hired Michael Alford as its general counsel.
He will be based in Miami and oversee BankUnited's legal and compliance functions, according to an announcement Monday, his first day on the job. The announcement included the bank operates in Florida and the New York metropolitan area and had $32.7 billion in total assets as of March 31.
Alford succeeds the bank's former top lawyer and senior executive vice president, Jeffrey Starr, who stepped down in May after nearly 10 years with BankUnited. His LinkedIn profile does not list a new position. Starr also had served as managing vice president and chief counsel for Capital One N.A., according to the profile.
Alford most recently worked as a lawyer and executive for Habitat for Humanity, a nonprofit organization. But he spent the bulk of his career as an in-house leader at Raymond James Financial Inc., a multinational investment bank and financial services company with headquarters in St. Petersburg, Florida.
BankUnited chairman, president and CEO Rajinder Singh issued a statement in which he trumpeted Alford's “wealth of knowledge and experience in the financial services industry,” adding that the new GC “will be a valuable part of the leadership team.”
Alford, who was unavailable for comment, spent more than 23 years as senior vice president and deputy general counsel at Raymond James, according to his LinkedIn profile.
He parted ways with the investment bank in December 2017 and later joined Habitat for Humanity of Pinellas and West Pasco counties as chief administrative officer and legal counsel. After seven months in that role, he took a position as the Tampa-based chief risk officer for Habitat for Humanity of Hillsborough County.
Alford, a graduate of the University of Florida Fredric G. Levin College of Law, began his law career as an associate at Holland & Knight in Miami in 1986. Three years later, he was tapped to serve as general counsel of investment bank and stock brokerage PaineWebber Group Inc., which merged in 2000 with Swiss bank UBS A.G.
Alford left PaineWebber years before the merger in 1993, when he went back into private practice as an associate at the Miami law firm of Fowler White Burnett. He joined Raymond James a year later.
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