UnitedHealth Top Lawyer Earned $11 Million as Company Fought DOJ

UnitedHealth Group Inc. paid its chief legal officer more than $11.3 million last year as the company defeated a Justice Department lawsuit seeking to block the acquisition of Change Healthcare Inc.

Rupert Bondy, in his first year in the managed health and insurance giant’s top law job, received more than $7 million in stock and option awards, according to the company’s proxy statement. He also received $3.8 million in cash, including a $2 million sign-on bonus, UnitedHealth disclosed in the April 21 filing.

UnitedHealthcare successfully defended its $7.8 billion Change Healthcare purchase against the Justice Department’s attempt to block the deal. US antitrust regulators have said they will appeal a court ruling dismissing the case.

Bondy, who began his career as an associate at Morrison & Foerster in San Francisco, has previously been the top lawyer at British oil and gas enterprise BP PLC and Reckitt Benckiser Group PLC, a U.K.-based consumer goods company whose notable brands include Clearasil, Enfamil, and Lysol.

At UnitedHealth he succeeded Matthew Friedrich, a former Justice Department prosecutor who was hired to be the company’s top lawyer in January 2021.

Friedrich left that job after only a few months following the unexpected retirement in February 2021 of former UnitedHealth chief executive David Wichmann, who was succeeded by Andrew Witty. Witty is a former chief executive at GlaxoSmithKline PLC, where Bondy used to be general counsel.

UnitedHealth tapped Wichmann, as well as Change Healthcare’s former top executive, Neil de Crescenzo, who now leads UnitedHealth’s Optum health services business, to testify at trial last year defending the Change Healthcare merger. Hogan Lovells represented UnitedHealth in the DOJ antitrust dispute.

Heidi Fisher, a former Fox Rothschild partner hired as head of litigation in 2020, was promoted last year to deputy general counsel at UnitedHealth, which also tapped Bondy to be its new corporate secretary.

Dannette Smith, a former senior deputy general counsel who previously held that role at the Minnetonka, Minn.-based company, retired last year, a UnitedHealth spokesman said.