Vice President of Legal, Warner Bros Discovery
Commercial Partnerships, Maternity Cover
Entertainment company
Job no longer available
Entertainment company
1001+ employees
Job no longer available
1001+ employees
Company mission
To take the world’s greatest possibilities and make them a reality - creating impact, inspiring imagination, and building connections.
Role
Who you are
- Extensive experience with a top law firm or equivalent in-house team
- Must be a UK (or comparable jurisdiction) qualified lawyer
- Excellent academics
- Gravitas and ability to command and influence when negotiating with third parties, and to establish authority within WBD
- Ability to work autonomously on complex deals and to own key internal commercial relationships
- Negotiation skills – to deliver appropriate legal protection to the company and excellent commercial results
- Flexible and proactive approach to work, including a willingness to work outside of usual working hours when required to support key deals. Some travel may be required
- Excellent interpersonal skills – ability to work effectively at all levels within the company
- Clear and concise communicator (both orally and written) – able to present and distil complex issues into legally compliant, practical commercial solutions in an engaging way to key stakeholders, ensuring everyone is consistently kept informed
- Well organised and attention to detail: this role requires focus and energy
- Good commercial knowledge and common sense are essential
- Extremely professional: calm under pressure, clear thinking, proactive and grasps concepts quickly
- Must be a good team player with a flexible, hands-on approach
- High emotional intelligence with the ability to diffuse and calm situations
- An inclusive approach and experience working with clients from different cultures and backgrounds
- Able to manage own time judiciously and deal effectively with competing interests
What the job involves
- The Vice President, Legal, Commercial Partnerships will be responsible for providing Legal support to all commercial aspects of WBD’s business in Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East, North Africa and Turkey markets and will also cover other territories as required
- This is a senior leadership position within the Commercial partnerships Legal team, acting with autonomy on high value, strategically important and complex commercial deals
- This individual will be responsible for negotiating key agreements with senior stakeholders and will support the General Manager, CEEMENAT in these negotiations
- Draft and negotiate agreements relating to WBD’s commercial partnerships across CEEMENAT and other territories, relating to the distribution of WBD channels, services and HBO Max, as well as with respect to advertising and sponsorship
- Advise and support local teams on contractual rights and remedies relating to commercial partnership agreements
- As part of the CEEMENAT RMT, work with the business leads and teams to ensure all areas include and work with Legal in accordance with WBD policies and broad pan-regional commercial strategies
- Be the primary Legal point person for all legal issues impacting CEEMENAT and liaise with colleagues from other/specialist areas of the Legal team as appropriate
- Manage Legal consultants based in territories across CEEMENAT and supervise more junior members of the legal team
- Work with streaming teams to help drive launch of HBO Max, via retail and wholesale partnerships
- Support all strategic initiatives in CEEMENAT, notably JVs and other strategic partnerships
- Provide on-going general business and legal advice to internal clients and project manage cross-functional legal initiatives
Salary benchmarks
Our take
Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) is an entertainment company formed from the 2022 merger of Warner Bros and Discovery. It is a leader in the creation, production, distribution, licensing, and marketing of content, with Warner Bros alone boasting a huge library – more than 100,000 hours of programming – before the companies were joined. WBD’s portfolio includes Discovery Channel, Warner Bros. Entertainment, Discovery+, HBO Max, and franchises like “Batman” and “Harry Potter”.
Both of the company’s previous businesses have operated throughout the digitisation of the media space. David Zaslav, CEO of WBD, headed Discovery during its expansion into digital media, to make it a “content company” over a “cable company”. The recent focus for Warner Bros has been on next-gen distribution efforts, expanding the availability of its content across platforms and devices to reach the modern viewer. The new company has plans to migrate to one tech stack, which will require extensive retooling, as well as exploring cost-saving automation opportunities for its operations.
Since the merger, the new giant that is Warner Bros Discovery has had a shaky start, forcing the company to wind down operations and cut back on content, which included the very public scrapping of the “Batgirl” movie. However, it now seems the company may have been ahead of the curve, as a wider trend of cutbacks has been seen from peers in the space. This early move, combined with a hyper-focus on cash generation, seeks to establish WBD as an outperformer in an industry on the downturn.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
-1% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Company HQ
Midtown Manhattan, New York, NY
Leadership
David Zaslav
(CEO & President)Spent 17 years at NBCUniversal including as President of NBC Cable LLC and NBC Media LLC.
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