Legal news and trends for Canadian in-house counsel and c-suite executives
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PROFILE By Vawn Himmelsbach Cross-border team up Ted Wilby banks on Capital One for innovative career. A sociology major who spent a year as a self-professed "ski bum" in Whistler, B.C., in the Rockies, Ted Wilby has gone on to become associate general counsel for one of the world's best-known financial institutions. But Capital One isn't your typical bank. It has built a repu- tation on innovation in the credit card marketplace with ideas like low introduc- tory rates, balance transfers, and fixed- rate products in North America. Now, in his seventh year at Capital One Bank (Canada Branch), Wilby is responsible for all legal matters within its Canadian operations, as well as heading up government relations in Canada. "There are lots of changes in the law and in technology and in business strategy," he says. "It's not boring. You come to work every day and you plan your strategy for the future, but the future is never what we think it will be, so you constantly recalibrate." The company's parent, Capital One Financial Corp., is a Fortune 500 financial services company with more than 49 million customers worldwide. But the Canadian office has a small legal team — Wilby works with one other lawyer. So, while they rely on external counsel, they also work closely with their counterparts in the U.S. "We leverage some of our in-house lawyers in the U.S., [since] they have a much larger team. In the area of contracting, we can set the standards and deal with the Canadian regulatory Here's this policy issue — how has it been proposed to be dealt with in the U.S. or U.K.; how can it help us make better proposals and decisions for Canada? TED WILBY, Capital One Bank (Canada Branch) INHOUSE DECEMBER 2010/JANUARY 2011 • 35