Top GCs On the Move

Below are the most notable general counsel who switched jobs over the past week.

Uber Hires Top Lawyer From Pepsi

• Tony West has been named successor to Salle Yoo, as general counsel of Uber. He will inherit a company in the midst of a high profile intellectual property theft suit, five federal criminal probes and dozens of other lawsuits.

He is first major hire for Uber chief executive officer Dara Khosrowshahi, who was offered his job in August. West comes to the ride share company from PepsiCo, where he served as general counsel and before, the Department of Justice, where he served as an associate attorney general under Eric Holder.

“Tony is exactly what Uber needs now,” Khosrowshahi wrote in an email to staff, which was seen by Bloomberg. “At Pepsi, he has emphasized diversity on his team and across the company. But perhaps most importantly, Pepsi has been named one of the world’s most ethical companies 10 years in a row. Under Tony’s leadership, I’m confident that we will one day join this list.”

At the Department of Justice, West helped oversee components of the department’s civil litigating, grant-making, Office of Tribal Justice and the Access to Justice Initiative among other responsibilities. West has also served a litigation partner at Morrison & Foerster in San Francisco.

Gambling Machine Company Hires GC

• Christopher Spears is joining International Game Technology as the senior vice president and general counsel. Spears will handle legal and corporate governance matters for the company, which develops gambling machines for casinos and other venues.

Spears comes to IGT from Caterpillar Inc., where he worked for 19 years according to an IGT release. He served as group general counsel for the commercial and international operations sector. He also served as an associate at Greenebaum Doll & McDonald.

Insurance Company Taps Top Lawyer

• The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America has hired Eric Dinallo as executive vice president and general counsel. He will replace Tracy Rich, who served as Guardian’s executive vice president and general counsel since 2009. Rich will be retiring.

Dinallo will be in responsible for Guardian’s legal, regulatory and compliance functions as well as other matters. Dinallo comes to the company from Debevoise & Plimpton, where he was a partner at the New York office and a member of the firm’s financial institutions group. He is also an adjunct professor of business ethics at New York University’s Stern School of Business.

Swedish Biopharmaceutical Company Appoints New GC

• Torbjörn Hallberg has been appointed general counsel of Swedish biopharmaceutical company Sobi. He comes to the company from Takeda Pharmaceuticals, where he served vice president and general counsel of emerging markets, according to a company release. Torbjörn’s legal experience is in licensing, mergers and acquisitions and has spent more than 15 years in in-house counsel roles within the pharmaceutical industry.

Vermont Drug Testing Lab Hires GC

• Aspenti Health, a Vermont based clinical drug testing lab has brought on Jason Turner to serve as vice president of compliance, quality and general counsel. Turner most recently served in the Vermont attorney general’s office, where he worked as an assistant attorney general and director of the Medicaid fraud and residential abuse unit among other roles. Prior to that job, Turner was an associate at Fulbright & Jaworski (now Norton Rose Fulbright) in healthcare litigation in Austin, Texas.

Contact the reporter responsible for this story: Max Siegelbaum at maxsiegelbaum@gmail.com.

Contact the editors responsible for this column: Casey Sullivan at csullivan@bloomberglaw.com and Tom Taylor at ttaylor@bna.com.