Top Abercrombie Lawyer Sounds Off on VW, Saying CEO is Not the Client

ByYin Wilczek, Bloomberg BNA

General counsel, in trying to keep their companies out of trouble, must heed one key point: they represent the corporation, not the CEO, Abercrombie & Fitch Co. General Counsel Robert Bostrom said.

The general counsel’s client is not the executive team or the chief executive officer but the corporation, acting through the board of directors, Bostrom said. “Ultimately, hard as that may be sometimes, the hardest conversation a general counsel can ever have is to say to the CEO, ‘I’m not your lawyer, I’m the company’s lawyer.’”

Bostrom said that if Volkswagen AG were ...