Activision Blizzard has announced in an SEC filing that Grant Dixton will be joining the company as its chief legal officer (CLO) from The Boeing Company, where he is senior vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary and a member of the executive council.
Dixton will succeed Chris Walther, who is retiring as Activision Blizzard’s CLO on June 14. Walther has been CLO with the interactive entertainment company, which produces games such as Call of Duty, Crash Bandicoot, World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, Diablo and King’s Candy Crush, since November 2009 and was corporate secretary from February 2010 until February 2011.
Before joining the company, he held positions within the legal department of The Procter & Gamble Company, including general counsel for Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa, general counsel for North East Asia and, most recently, general counsel for Western Europe. Walther also led Procter & Gamble’s corporate and securities and M&A practices.
Dixton was named general counsel at Boeing in May 2020 and corporate secretary in October 2016. He spent four years as deputy general counsel, a position in which he was responsible for legal matters across the company, advised senior leadership and had management responsibility across the law department.
From 2007 to 2016, Dixton was vice president and assistant general counsel for Boeing defense, space and security. He joined the company in September 2006 as vice president and assistant general counsel. Before that, he served in the White House as associate counsel to former president George W Bush, providing legal, policy and strategic advice on subjects including lobbying and ethics reform, tort reform, internal investigations and litigation matters involving the US government. Earlier in his career, Dixton was an attorney with Kirkland & Ellis.
Activision Blizzard earlier this year hired Frances Townsend as executive vice president for corporate affairs, corporate secretary and chief compliance officer. She also oversees government affairs, public policy and communications, among other functions. Townsend was previously vice chair, general counsel and chief administrative officer at MacAndrews & Forbes. Before that, she was a corporate partner with law firm Baker Botts.
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...
