Veteran in-house counsel Arnold Pinkston began work this week as the new chief legal officer at CoreLogic Inc., an Irvine, California-based property and data technology company.

With more than 25 years serving in-house, Pinkston was most recently general counsel at Allergan Inc. He was heavily involved in successfully fending off the seven-month long, hostile takeover attempt in 2014 by Valeant Pharmaceuticals International and Bill Ackman's Pershing Square Capital Management. Later that year Allergan agreed to be acquired by Irish drugmaker Actavis.

Last week Allergan's shareholders had the last laugh, obtaining a $290 million class action settlement from Valeant and Pershing. Their lawsuit accused Valeant of colluding with Pershing on the takeover bid while secretly buying up Allergan stock.

The stock price jumped when news of the Valeant bid became public, and Pershing allegedly made $1 billion in profits in one day.

Pinkston ran Allergan's legal department from October 2011 to March 2015. Since then, he has served as a director on several boards, including Bio-Rad Laboratories, the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, and Janus Capital Group.

Prior to joining Allergan, he served as GC at Beckman Coulter from 2005 to 2011, and had been a deputy general counsel at Eli Lilly and Co. where he worked for 11 years. He began his career as an attorney with Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe.

Pinkston was not immediately available for comment. But Frank Martell, president and chief executive officer of CoreLogic, said in a statement, “Arnie is an accomplished executive with a proven track record in important leadership roles including legal, regulatory and compliance, government affairs and intellectual property rights over the past 25 years. His ability to build and lead large teams in complex data-driven industries and rapidly evolving environments makes Arnie a great add to CoreLogic.”

Pinkston replaces former CoreLogic general counsel Stergios “Terry” Theologides, who left the company to pursue other opportunities Sept. 15, 2017.

Pinkston offered his insights into the dangers of staggering the election of boards of directors in a July 2015 article he wrote for the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation.

He wrote, “As a corporate insider, I see the debate over staggered boards as fundamentally a battle between directors and shareholders for power over the company. With a destaggered board, shareholders can more quickly impose their will on the company by threatening all of the directors with removal at annual meetings. For shareholders, this provides a powerful tool to force their agenda in the short term.”

Pinkston also was quoted in a June 2014 article in Corporate Counsel about the seven main qualities needed to become a general counsel. In discussing a number of skills required, Pinkston said, “If you do your work well, believe me, when someone needs something done, they are going to come ask you to help. That opportunity to add value is the key to your success and your company's.”

Later in the article he discussed leadership traits. “You cannot be a great general counsel unless you can get people to work together,” Pinkston said. “Fundamentally, no work in a corporation gets done solely because individuals are doing great things; it is always teams.”

He continued, “Every major human advancement, in fact, depends on teamwork. So, creating good interactions amongst teammates and making sure everyone is trained makes the team more effective. These are the only ways to ensure the success of the enterprise.”