Airbnb has recruited Rich Baer as chief legal officer (CLO). He will start at Airbnb in early October, reporting to COO Belinda Johnson, and will be based in San Francisco.
He joins Airbnb at an interesting time, with the company having announced earlier this month that it expects to become a publicly traded company ‘during 2020.’
Baer was most recently CLO and chief administrative officer of Liberty Media, Qurate Retail, GCI Liberty, Liberty TripAdvisor Holdings and Liberty Broadband. These five public companies own or hold large stakes in companies including SiriusXM, Formula One Group, Live Nation Entertainment, TripAdvisor, the Atlanta Braves and Charter Communications. Baer has worked at Liberty since January 2013.
Before that he was executive vice president and CLO of UnitedHealth Group and was previously executive vice president, general counsel and chief administrative officer of Qwest Communications International. Earlier in his career he was chair of the litigation department at law firm Sherman & Howard.
‘As someone who has served as the general counsel for fast-scaling, large, complex, globally branded and publicly traded companies, Rich will be an incredible advocate for all our stakeholders, and we are thrilled to welcome him to the Airbnb team,’ Johnson says in a statement.
‘I’m inspired by Airbnb’s purpose to drive belonging and how it is intently focused on balancing the interests of its diverse array of stakeholders, including hosts, guests, employees and communities,’ Baer says in an announcement. ‘I am excited to have the chance to work with the incredibly talented Airbnb team and can’t wait to get started.’
Effective September 23, Renee Wilm has assumed the role of CLO at Liberty Media Corporation, as well as at Qurate Retail, Liberty Broadband, Liberty TripAdvisor Holdings and GCI Liberty.
Before joining the company, she was a senior partner at law firm Baker Botts, where she represented the company and its predecessors for more than 20 years, according to a company filing. In that capacity, she specialized in M&A, complex capital structures and shareholder arrangements, as well as securities offerings and corporate governance and securities law compliance matters.
Ben Maiden
Ben Maiden is the editor-at-large of Governance Intelligence, an IR Media publication, having joined the company in December 2016. He is based in New York. Ben was previously managing editor of Compliance Reporter, covering regulatory and compliance...
