Match Group Legal Chief Jumps to GoDaddy After Google Settlement

GoDaddy Inc. said that Jared Sine, chief business affairs and legal officer at Match Group Inc., will join the Tempe, Ariz.-based company on March 18 as its new chief legal and strategy executive.

Sine’s move, announced late Thursday, comes three months after Match reached a settlement on the eve of trial with Alphabet Inc.’s Google. Match, which owns dating apps Hinge, Match.com, OkCupid, and Tinder, sued Google in 2022 over allegedly monopolistic practices by its online app store. Google countersued.

The trial, which would have taken place in a federal court in San Francisco, was followed in December by a separate $700 million settlement by Alphabet over its Google Play policies with attorneys general representing about three dozen US states. The terms of Match’s deal with Alphabet weren’t disclosed.

GoDaddy, one of the largest internet domain registrars, has been searching for a new top lawyer since its former legal chief and corporate secretary Michele Lau left in mid-November to become the top lawyer for McKesson Corp. Lau, who joined GoDaddy in 2021, had previously been an associate general counsel at McKesson. GoDaddy gave Sine a lucrative pay package to replace her.

The company disclosed that its new legal chief will receive $500,000 in annual base salary and $10 million in GoDaddy shares that will vest over a four-year period, according to a copy of Sine’s employment agreement.

Sine, a former associate at Cravath, Swaine & Moore and Latham & Watkins, joined Match as its general counsel in 2016. The Dallas-based company, which was spun off in 2020 by Barry Diller’s IAC/InterActivCorp, awarded him a $16.9 million pay package the following year. Sine earned nearly $8.6 million in total compensation from Match in 2022, per its most recent proxy statement.

Match disclosed in a securities filing Thursday that Jeanette Teckman, an associate general counsel for litigation, intellectual property, and compliance, will succeed Sine as interim legal chief on March 11. Teckman spoke last month with a Texas legal publication about how she, Sine, and other Match lawyers spent years trying to resolve the company’s antitrust dispute with Google.

In January, two months after the end of that litigation, Paul Singer’s hedge fund Elliott Investment Management LP assembled a $1 billion stake in Match. Securities filings show that within the past year Sine has sold off roughly $466,700 in Match shares. He stills owns nearly $2.9 million in Match stock.

Sine didn’t respond to a comment request about his decision to join GoDaddy but said in a statement that he was “inspired” by the company’s “mission to empower entrepreneurs everywhere through its technology platform.”

GoDaddy went public in 2015. The company’s founder, billionaire Robert “Bob” Parsons, spoke with Bloomberg TV in November about his efforts to donate part of his fortune to US military veterans. Parsons, a former Marine, along with his wife Renee in 2013 joined The Giving Pledge, an initiative started by Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, and others to commit half their wealth to charity.