Well, well, well . . nothing says “strategic legal planning” quite like hiring the very lawyer who helped broker your multibillion-dollar acquisition to then become your top legal talent.
Makan Delrahim has officially traded his Latham & Watkins partnership for the corner office at Paramount Skydance Corporation, stepping into the CLO role on October 6th after spending three-and-a-half years advising on the exact deal that created his new employer.
Delrahim will now oversee all legal, regulatory, compliance, and public policy matters for the media behemoth – including the very integration he helped orchestrate from the outside. Talk about knowing where all the bodies are buried.
The timing is particularly chef’s kiss perfect, considering Delrahim’s impressive revolving door resume: White House deputy counsel under Trump, DOJ antitrust division assistant attorney general, and now corporate CLO for a company that owns everything from Paramount Pictures to CBS.
David Ellison was highly enthusiastic about Delrahim’s “longstanding collaboration with the Skydance team” – which roughly translates to “he already knows all our dirty laundry and won’t be shocked by our compliance nightmares.”
Delrahim, for his part, expressed honor at joining during such a “dynamic and transformative time,” because nothing screams transformation like a $28 billion media merger in an industry desperately trying to figure out if streaming actually makes money.
