The Walt Disney Company has hired Horacio Gutierrez as senior executive vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary, effective February 1.
Gutierrez will join Disney having previously worked at Spotify as head of global affairs and chief legal officer. He will succeed Alan Braverman – who is retiring after nearly two decades as general counsel – and report to CEO Bob Chapek.
Gutierrez’s areas of responsibility will include litigation, compliance, transactional law, securities law, regulatory matters, privacy protection, global ethics and patent, copyright and trademark issues.
At Spotify, he led a team of legal, business, corporate communications and public affairs, government relations, licensing and operations professionals responsible for the company’s work in areas such as industry relations, content partnerships, public policy and trust and safety. He was previously Spotify’s general counsel and vice president for business and legal affairs from 2016 to 2019.
Before joining Spotify, Gutierrez was corporate vice president and general counsel for Microsoft. He joined the company in 1998 as corporate attorney for Latin America and worked in a variety of roles including associate general counsel for EMEA, deputy general counsel with the intellectual property and licensing group and deputy general counsel with the products and services group.
Chapek says in a statement: ‘Horacio is an incredibly skilled attorney and dynamic leader who comes to Disney with 35 years of legal experience in markets around the globe. Having spent more than two decades working for premier technology companies, he has an extensive understanding of the complex legal questions that come with technological disruption and rapid industry change.
‘Horacio is a key addition to my leadership team, and I look forward to working with him as he builds on Alan’s outstanding legacy leading our unparalleled legal organization.’
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...
