Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based banking company PNC Financial Services Group has made two appointments to its legal and risk teams.
As of September 8, Amy Wierenga will serve as chief risk officer and will join PNC’s executive committee.
Wierenga currently serves as head of financial and model risk for IRM, before which she worked for BlueMountain Capital Management as partner, chief risk officer and head of risk and portfolio construction.
Reporting to directly to chairman and CEO William Demchak in her new role, Wierenga succeeds Kieran Fallon, who is moving into a new position as deputy general counsel, strategic regulatory adviser and exam oversightfor the company.
In his new role, Fallon will help lead the company through the evolving regulatory landscape and will work closely with Ursula Pfeil, deputy general counsel, regulatory affairs and regulatory policy.
Meanwhile Galaxy Digital, a US provider of digital assets and data center infrastructure, has named Matt Friedrichaschief legal officer.
Effective as of September 8, Friedrich will report directly to CEO and founder Mike Novogratz and will serve as a member of the company senior leadership team.
Prior to joining Galaxy, Friedrich served as EVP and general counsel at Cognizant Technology Solutions and Chevron, where he served as chief corporate counsel.
Before this he was also a partneratFreshfields Bruckhaus DeringerandBoies, Schiller & Flexner.
Earlier in his career, Friedrich was a federal prosecutor, spending 13 years at theUS Department of Justiceandacting assistant attorney general of the Criminal Division.
Friedrich succeeds Andrew Siegel, who had served as Galaxy’s general counsel since 2017.
Elsewhere, paints, coatings and specialty materials provider PPG has confirmed that Anne Foulkes, who has served as senior vice president and general counselsince 2018, will retire ‘as part of a planned succession for the role’.
As of January 1, 2026, Foulkes will enter a new role as senior vice president, legal and special projects until August 31, 2026. During this period, she will oversee the completion of select projects and ensure a smooth transition. A successor has not yet been named.
In San Francisco, Robert Keele has stepped down from his role as head of legal at Elon Musk’s technology firm xAI after just over a year in the role.
In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Keele writes that he wanted to spend more time with his two toddlers that he doesn’t get to spend enough time with.
He also hinted at leadership differences with founder Musk in the post, saying: ‘Working with Elon on this tech, at this time, was the adventure of a lifetime. Althoughthere’s daylight between our worldviews, his vision, commitment and smarts blew me away on the daily.’
Lily Lim has been appointed as the company’s new head of legal. Before embarking on a legal career, she worked as a rocket scientist at NASA.
Before her appointment, Lim served as xAI’s head of product and privacy Legal.
Staying in North America, CIBC (Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce)has named StephenScholtzas its new global chief legal officer.
Scholtz has held several senior legal roles during his 20-year career with CIBC and most recently served as general counsel,Canada.
He succeeds Kikelomo Lawal, the bank’s former EVP and chief legal officer, who is retiring from the company.
Over in the UK, PTSB, an Irish retail banking group, has made two senior appointments to its leadership team following a competitive selections process, with Fiona McMahon named as chief risk officer and Mairead Kirwan as head of compliance.
McMahon is a former chief risk officer at Ulster Bank Ireland DAC and previously was director of compliance for the same bank. She joined PTSB in January of this year as head of risk.
In her new role, McMahon will join the bank’s executive committee and report to the CEO and independently to the chair of the board risk and compliance committee.
Kirwan, meanwhile, formerly worked as deputy head of compliance and head of regulatory affairs at PTSB and is a former head of financial crime compliance.
In her new role, Kirwan will lead the bank’s regulatory compliance function and will be the primary point of contact between PTSB and its regulator, the Central Bank of Ireland.