After Just 16 Months at Square, GC Hillary Smith Resigns
It's unknown where Smith will land next, but another in-house lawyer at Square, Sivan Whiteley, has been named as her successor.
May 22, 2018 at 01:08 PM
3 minute read
The original version of this story was published on Corporate Counsel
Hillary Smith joined Square Inc. as general counsel in November 2016. Less than a year and a half later, she resigned.
The mobile payments company announced Smith's resignation in an 8-K filed in March, though her exit was widely publicized only on Monday by Business Insider.
According to the filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Smith announced her intent to leave the San Francisco-based mobile payments company at the end of February with the resignation effective March 18—though she'll provide Square with “transitional services” through September. During that time of transition, the filing stated Smith will continue to receive her current salary and company benefits.
Smith's offer letter, attached to a 10-K filing from Square in February 2017, said she received an annual salary of $350,000, as well as a $100,000 starting bonus. After staying more than a year, Smith's offer letter indicates she would have received another $100,000 bonus and that at least 150,000 of her restricted units of the company's Class A stock would have vested. Going by the stock's current value—around $56—that would bring the total estimated value of her compensation to more than $8 million.
It's not yet clear why Smith resigned or where she'll be headed next. Smith did not immediately respond to request for comment about her departure, and a representative from Square declined to comment.
Smith, who was GC and corporate secretary at Zenefits for more than a year before joining Square, told The Recorder in a July 2017 interview that at Square she was managing a group of about 140 people, including both lawyers and nonlawyers. She spoke about how the company is leveraging technology to tackle a litany of regulatory requirements and said that she had no “typical” day at Square.
“You get to work with all kinds of different people on all kinds of issues,” Smith said at the time. “I never get bored.”
Square has named a replacement for Smith from within the legal department, Sivan Whiteley.
Whiteley began serving as the company's general counsel upon Smith's resignation in March. Whiteley has been at Square for more than five years, most recently in the role of director, associate general counsel. She also served as acting co-general counsel of the company from August to November 2016, according to her LinkedIn profile.
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