Left to right: Matt Cooper and John G. Finneran Jr., Capital One. Photo credit: Bloomberg News.

Capital One Financial Corp. has named Matthew Cooper, 46, who has been chief counsel and functional head of its legal department for the past two years, as its new general counsel, effective Feb. 1.

Cooper replaces John Finneran, 67, who will become interim chief risk officer at the McLean, Virginia-based company from Feb. 1 to Aug. 1, according to a company filing Tuesday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Neither Cooper nor Finneran was immediately available for comment.

The filing describes a round of musical chairs. On Aug. 1, Finneran will become senior adviser to chairman and CEO Richard Fairbank, as well as to the company's executive team and board of directors. Finneran remains the company's corporate secretary and will be responsible for all corporate governance processes.

Finneran will replace chief risk officer Kevin Borgmann, who has held the job since January 2013. Borgmann also is becoming a senior adviser to Fairbank on Feb. 1. The change of jobs was requested by Borgmann, the company said in the filing.

Finneran will be replaced as CRO on Aug. 1 by Sheldon Hall, 41, a business development banker for Capital One. Hall joined the company in 1997 and has held roles of increasing responsibility across the company, including president of Capital One Auto Finance.

The new GC, Cooper, joined the company in January 2009. He leads a department of 350 attorneys and legal professionals. He previously served two years as executive vice president for legal, overseeing about half the legal department, and spent three years as chief litigation counsel.

Prior to joining Capital One, Cooper held various executive positions in the legal department of General Electric Co., as well as deputy general counsel of one of its successor companies, Genworth Financial. He also spent four years in private practice, including 10 months in commercial litigation at McGuire Woods and over three years at Bradley Arant Boult Cummings.

At Capital One, Cooper will head a legal department dealing with at least four major litigation matters cited by the company in its latest quarterly financial report to the SEC filed in November. They include:

• An investigation of Capital One by the New York District Attorney's Office, the U.S. Department of Justice and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network of the U.S. Department of the Treasury for possible money laundering violations. The company is cooperating with all agencies in the investigation. In addition, Capital One already is subject to an open consent order with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency dated July 10, 2015, related to regulatory deficiencies in its anti-money laundering program.
• A long-running antitrust class action suit against several banks, MasterCard and Visa alleging that the defendants conspired to fix the level of interchange fees. Any damages could be trebled. The suit is pending in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn.
• A complex lawsuit filed in 2009 in New York County Supreme Court against a now-closed subsidiary, GreenPoint Mortgage Funding Inc. Three original plaintiffs alleged that GreenPoint breached representations and warranties related to its sale of a portfolio of 30,000 mortgages worth about $1.8 billion. Two plaintiffs were dismissed, and U.S. Bank remains the sole plaintiff in the case.
• Three summonses filed in 2012 by the Federal Housing Finance Agency filed with notice in New York State Court against GreenPoint on behalf of trustees for three RMBS trusts backed by loans originated by GreenPoint. The loans have an aggregate original principal balance of $3.4 billion. The suit alleged breaches of contractual representations and warranties regarding compliance with GreenPoint underwriting guidelines on loans. Last March, the trial court dismissed the claims as untimely, but in May the plaintiff appealed.

On all litigation matters, the filing stated that management estimated “the reasonably possible future losses beyond our reserves as of September 30, 2017, is approximately $250 million. There is significant uncertainty as to the ultimate liability we may incur from these litigation matters and an adverse outcome in one or more of these matters could be material to our results.”