Hutton Names Finance Chief

E. F. Hutton Group on Monday announced the choice of a new chief financial officer, a step that was recommended last year in a probe of a massive check-overdrafting scheme at its brokerage unit, E. F. Hutton & Co.

New York-based Hutton said Edward J. Lill, partner-in-charge of the financial-services industry practice for Deloitte Haskins & Sells, one of the nation’s Big Eight accounting firms, will begin work at Hutton on March 1.

Lill, 53, a 33-year veteran of Deloitte Haskins & Sells, will serve as an executive vice president as well as chief financial officer of Hutton and will be on an eight-member management committee for the financial-services holding company, Hutton said.

Hutton pleaded guilty last year to 2,000 counts of mail and wire fraud in connection with a scheme to overdraft its bank accounts and, in effect, receive interest-free loans from its bankers.

Thomas P. Lynch, Hutton’s chief financial officer at the time of the scheme, was accused in a subsequent investigation of failing to ensure that adequate controls were established to prevent such abuses.

Lynch agreed to relinquish his duties as chief financial officer and corporate secretary and has since been given new duties.