Spotify general counsel and global head of corporate development Jared Grusd is to leave for news outlet the Huffington Post to become the company’s CEO. Mr Grusd had spent nearly four years at Spotify, having joined from a role as chief strategy officer and business development officer at AOL, the Huffington Post’s parent company. He will lead a team of roughly 140 people globally in his new role and will not provide in-house legal services as part of his core responsibilities. Mr Grusd will replace the Huffington Post’s current CEO Jimmy Maymann; his replacement at Spotify has yet to be announced. 

After announcing a “realignment” of its legal team in July, Standard Chartered has appointed ICAP general counsel Duncan Wales as deputy general counsel. He will report to general counsel David Fein. At broker ICAP, Mr Wales served as director of government affairs, Europe and Middle East general counsel and senior counsel to the electronic broking division before being appointed as general counsel in 2008. Before going in-house, he was a solicitor at Clifford Chance. ICAP has appointed general counsel and chief operating officer for the Americas Stuart Wexler and Europe, Middle East and Africa and Asia-Pacific general counsel Damian Morris as interim general counsel until a permanent replacement for Mr Wales is named.

Amarin Corporation, a biopharmaceutical company focused on the commercialisation and development of therapeutics to improve cardiovascular health, has announced the promotion of Joseph T. Kennedy to executive vice president, general counsel and strategic initiatives. Mr Kennedy joined the company, headquartered in New Jersey and Dublin, Ireland, at the end of 2011 as senior vice president and general counsel. Previously, Mr Kennedy served as vice president and U.S. counsel, corporate business development, with Élan Corporation, where he participated in the company's sale of $2.0bn in assets. He formerly practiced law with Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, where he represented investment banks and developing companies in initial public offerings and mergers and acquisitions.

Heidi Schmid Whiting has been named vice president and general counsel of Graham Media Group, effective August 31. John Ronayne is retiring from that role after 14 years and will become vice president and senior counsel of the company, before retiring next spring. For the past seven years, Ms Whiting has been with the law offices of Cinnamon Mueller, a firm serving independent communications and technology companies. She also spent several years at Mudd Law Offices in Chicago, where she worked on defamation, libel and slander, as well as IP matters, e-commerce, and identity theft. 

United Online has announced that Mark Harrington joined the company at the beginning of August as executive vice president and general counsel. Mr Harrington has over 20 years of in-house legal experience and 10 years of general counsel, corporate secretary and board advisory experience. He most recently served as senior vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary of Guidance Software, a provider of software solutions for digital investigations. Prior to that, he was the division general counsel and senior attorney for the Communications Infrastructure Group of Intel Corporation. He also held previous legal positions at Munger, Tolles & Olson and Ticketmaster.