Slammin‘?
A new top lawyer wrestles with the legal issues at a leading sports entertainment company.
Michael Luisi is stepping into the ring as World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc.’s new general counsel. Since professional wrestling is approximately 10 percent wrestling and 90 percent acting, Luisi’s background in the entertainment industry should makes him a good fit for the law department’s A-team.
Luisi came to WWE from Miramax Film Corp., where he had spent 12 years in-house, most recently as executive vice president of worldwide operations. Before joining Miramax, he had worked at Frankfurt, Kurnit, Klein & Selz and at Weil, Gotshal & Manges before going in-house, initially at New Line Cinema Corporation.
Luisi reports directly to WWE chairman, CEO, and majority owner Vince McMahon. A spokesperson for Luisi declined to grant an interview.
Luisi’s biggest challenge in the new role may be getting the public to forget the alleged antics of his predecessor. In pro wrestling, a match with a controversial ending is known as a “screwjob,” and there’s no better way to describe former GC Jared Bartie ‘s departure from WWE last year. The top lawyer went down for the count after he was allegedly accused of making unwanted advances toward a female coworker at a WrestleMania 26 after-party.
Bartie told CorpCounsel.com in January 2009, shortly after he was hired, that he saw no reason that the job couldn’t be filled with drama, chaos, humor, and showmanship. But you can have too much of a good thing.
The WWE denied last May that Bartie was fired. But when publicity heated up, the WWE forced a tag team move by bringing in James Langham as interim GC. About a month later, Bartie’s accuser was also fired after she was allegedly caught in a sex act with a subordinate during office hours.
Well, that’s entertainment! In the arena of professional wrestling, a juicy scandal may even be good for business. The largest professional wrestling company in the world, WWE brought in more than $475 million in revenues last year. The company has beefed up its business by merchandising an assortment of collectibles, including action figurines and soundtrack compilations of wrestlers’ theme songs.
—Shannon Green
A Consuming Passion
At the World Economic Forum 2011 in Davos, Essar Group’s chief executive, Prashant Ruia, weighed in on the race ahead for Indian companies. “On any index, India’s at a fourth or a fifth of what China is consuming today,” he told CNBC. “If we’d like to consume what China’s consuming even in the next 20 years, then we have a significant amount of growth in front of us.”
There’s certainly some growth taking place in the legal department of the Mumbai-based conglomerate, which is a significant player in the multinational steel, energy, and telecommunications markets. One of its latest appointments is Raminder Singh, a former finance attorney with Vinson & Elkins’s U.K. division. He assumed his new position as general counsel of Essar Global Limited, the holding company for the global business interests of the Essar Group, in November.
Singh’s appointment rides a wave of high-level appointments to Essar’s London office. As the holding company’s first-ever general counsel, he handles all legal matters worldwide and reports directly to EGL’s business head, Sanjay Mehta. One of his tasks is growing the domestic legal team.
“EGL is a phenomenal Indian success story,” says Singh, a 1991 University of Leicester School of Law graduate. “I [hope to] make a major contribution to its continued growth and success.”
Essar operates in more than 20 countries. It has 70,000 employees and revenues of around $15 billion. In 2010 one of its subsidiaries, Essar Energy plc, debuted with the biggest IPO on the London Stock Exchange in recent years.
—Aimée Groth
Win-Winn Situation
Winn-Dixie Stores, Inc., has promoted assistant GC Timothy Williams to the role of general counsel. Williams has been with the Jacksonville-based grocery store chain since 2003, when he took over as head of labor and employment law. Now he’s responsible for management of all legal, governance, risk and compliance, and quality systems functions.
Williams is going to have plenty on his plate. Winn-Dixie filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2005. Once known as “The Beef People,” the chain subsequently trimmed some fat by closing stores across the Midwest and the Carolinas. Williams sees lingering economic woes and the increased focus on government regulations as prime areas of concern for any business, particularly food retailers. “Within the past year alone, our business has been impacted by increased regulations in health care, food safety, and corporate governance,” says Williams. “This, along with the rising cost of commodities and an economy that is slow to recover, contributes to a very challenging landscape for food retailers to navigate.”
The Los Angeles native relocated to Florida to join the company, but he’s no stranger to Dixieland. After graduating from law school, Williams clerked for a federal judge in Alabama and then headed to Atlanta to join Constangy, Brooks & Smith. He has litigated and provided training in areas ranging from diversity to workplace harassment.
Now on top of the retail business world, Williams rose through the ranks from the ground up—literally. “My first exposure to the retail world was as a sales clerk with the Athlete’s Foot in the Grand Avenues Mall in Milwaukee,” he says. Williams later worked as a fill-in sales representative for Nabisco Inc.
Williams has both undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Michigan. He replaces Laurence Appel, who has been named the company’s senior vice president of retail operations.
—S.G.
?
He’s Got the Goods?
A company with the heft of the world’s third-largest retailer needs a heavyweight top lawyer, and METRO AG has found one in Donatus Kaufmann the new legal head of the Düsseldorf-based company. Kaufmann took up his post in February, succeeding Rolf Giebeler, who left at the end of 2010.
If his curriculum vitae is any indication, Kaufmann, 48, has the goods to deal with the challenges that come with managing the legal operations of the retail giant. He was most recently with German pharmaceutical giant Boehringer Ingelheim, where he was corporate senior vice president of several divisions, group general counsel, and corporate secretary. Prior to that, he directed legal and regulatory affairs for the Esprit Telecom Group and oversaw its merger with Global TeleSystems Group.
Kaufmann obtained his Ph.D. in law from the University of Hamburg after earning a degree in history from the Sorbonne.
His cosmopolitan background should serve him in good stead as an executive of the multinational cash-and-carry behemoth. Metro Group had $90 billion in 2010 revenues, and employs 300,000 workers in more than 33 countries. Kaufmann oversees 215 attorneys as head of corporate legal affairs and compliance, group general counsel, and chief compliance officer. He also advises the sales divisions and Metro Group’s foreign subsidiaries.
—A.G.
The Sheik of Araby
The Abu Dhabi National Energy Company (TAQA) has named Steven Phillips as its new global general counsel. Phillips will be based in Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates. Established in 2005, the government-owned energy company already has a presence on five continents and provides 98 percent of the power and water flowing throughout the emirate. TAQA has 28,000 employees worldwide.
Phillips replaces Carl Sheldon, who was promoted to general manager in a company shake-up last year.
One of Phillips’s first items of business may be a case currently pending against TAQA. Former TAQA CEO Peter Barker-Homek sued the company for breach of contract last August in federal district court in Detroit. Barker-Homek claims that he was forced by the utility to sign a severance agreement under threat of imprisonment.
TAQA declined a request to interview Phillips.
Phillips most recently served as GC for subsidiary TAQA New World, Inc., in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Before that, he worked for CMS Enterprises Company in Asia and North America from May 1996 through TAQA’s acquisition of the company’s international power assets in 2007. At CMS, he was responsible for the acquisition, development, financing, and disposition of energy infrastructure companies and assets across North America, Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East.
A graduate of the University of California, Hastings College of Law, Phillips began his legal career at Morrison & Foerster in 1981. He was promoted to partner and stayed with the firm for 15 years before going in-house.
—S.G.
Keep on Truckin’?
A longtime in-house mover and shaker has made a major move. Now it’s time for some serious shaking.
Just three days into the new year, Thomas Gerke became general counsel and executive vice president of YRC Worldwide Inc., which specializes in transportation and global logistics solutions. He will also serve as secretary to the board of directors of the Overland Park, Kansas−based company.
Gerke’s first order of business is to oversee a massive financial restructuring of YRC, as the struggling company attempts to reduce its debt and increase its share in the “less-than-truckload” market. Last October, YRC worked out a series of wage, benefit, and pension fund concessions with its main union partner, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, as part of the restructuring. Union negotiations might be the easy part.
It’s just another day on the road for Gerke, who has held executive roles at several Fortune 500 companies. His most recent post was as executive vice-chairman at CenturyLink Inc., a Monroe, Louisiana−based broadband, entertainment, and voice services communications company once called CenturyTel, Inc. In June 2009 Gerke negotiated CenturyLink’s purchase of traditional wireline company Embarq Corporation, where he had been CEO since December 2007.
In the early-to-mid 2000s, Gerke was general counsel at Sprint Nextel Corporation, where he had also held other senior executive roles. For nine years before that, the University of Missouri School of Law graduate, who also has an MBA from Rockhurst University, had his own private legal practice specializing in regulatory and external affairs.
In the wake of some stock analysts’ predictions of YRC’s demise last year, the corporation, which also operates in China through joint ventures Shanghai Jiayu Logistics Company Limited and JHJ International Transportation Company Limited, has started to turn around. For the third quarter of 2010, which ended September 30, the company announced a net loss of $62 million—as compared to the third quarter of 2009, when the company reported a net loss of $159 million. So hopefully the road ahead will be less bumpy.
—Rob Mackay
Minding Our Business?
The new year brought in some major changes at federal government agencies as well as the halls of Congress, and two crucial legal appointments were announced on February 4 alone.
The Securities and Exchange Commission tapped Mark Cahn to be its next general counsel, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation named Michael Krimminger to be its top lawyer the same day.
Cahn replaced David Becker, who returned to the private sector.
Since March 2009, Cahn has served as the SEC’s deputy general counsel for litigation and adjudication. Before that, he spent 20 years at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr.
He’s not the only firm alumnus to hold a key job at the SEC; in November, Wilmer partner Joseph Brenner was named chief counsel of the division of enforcement.
Meanwhile, just down the road apiece, Krimminger got the nod from the FDIC.
Krimminger had served since 2009 as deputy to the chairman for policy, leading the development of initiatives including the FDIC’s new orderly liquidation authority under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Before that, he spent three years as an adviser in the office of the chairman and more than ten years in other senior policy and management positions.
The FDIC general counsel is in charge of the agency’s legal division, which is responsible for legal work on regulatory issues, as well as FDIC transactions, litigation, and corporate and commercial claims. The division has more than 800 employees nationwide.
—Jenna Greene
Sorry About That, Ma’am?
For the last three years, Nick Deeming has been general counsel and company secretary for Christie’s International plc. As top lawyer for the world’s leading art business, he was responsible for all legal and compliance functions worldwide. Deeming is now stepping into a less-than-pretty picture as the new GC for Transocean Ltd.
Deeming replaces Eric Brown, who will stay on to manage the company’s Macondo litigation from Transocean’s Houston office. The offshore drilling contractor has been sued by the U.S. Department of Justice and a multitude of individual plaintiffs over its role in the April 20 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The disaster killed 11 workers and spewed almost 5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. CorpCounsel.com asked a Transocean spokesman whether the company would make any public statement about its decision to shift Brown to the gulf. “No, ma’am,” he said. “That’s the short answer.”
Deeming earned his law degree from London Guildhall University. He has more than 20 years’ experience—mostly within the oil and gas, financial services, IT, and medical insurance sectors. Before joining Christie’s, Deeming worked as the chief legal officer for gas and engineering company Linde Group AG. He was responsible for appointing firms to the company’s first-ever law firm roster. Deeming has also held in-house positions at Sema Group Plc, PPP Healthcare Group PLC, Target Group Plc, and Burmah Oil Exploration Ltd.
—S.G.
Double Vision?
As the new year rang in, Cliffs Natural Resources Inc. restructured its legal department, creating two general counsel positions to deal with the ever-expanding international mining and natural resources company’s never-ending in-house needs.
James Graham was promoted from within the Cleveland-based company to the title of general counsel–global operations, while Gina Gunning was hired from outside to be general counsel–corporate affairs and secretary.
Graham, who had been assistant GC at Cliffs since 2007, is now in charge of a legal team that serves all of the entity’s operational and commercial needs. The Hiram College alumnus, who has a J.D. from Case Western Reserve University and a master’s degree from the University of Michigan, is responsible for providing counsel to the company’s operating units around the world and managing the in-house lawyers in the company’s business units.
Gunning, a graduate of Notre Dame University and its law school, was a partner in the capital markets practice group in the Cleveland office of Jones Day, one of the world’s largest law firms. In her newly created position at Cliffs, she is charged with providing legal advice and counsel to the company’s corporate management team. She will work in the accounting, treasury, tax, business development, and risk management areas. Gunning is also secretary to Cliffs’s board of directors.
Cliffs has three main departments: North America, which is composed of iron ore and coal mines from Alabama to Canada; Asia Pacific, which includes iron ore mining complexes and a coking and thermal coal mine in Australia; and Ferroalloys, an iron ore project in Amapa, Brazil.
Graham and Gunning work under the supervision of P. Kelly Tompkins, Cliffs’s chief legal officer and executive vice president–legal, government affairs, and sustainability.
—R.M.
