Cybersecurity Giant McAfee Names New Top Lawyer After Sale
McAfee LLC, a cybersecurity software company taken private earlier this year by a private equity-led investor group, has promoted Sarah Decker to chief legal and compliance officer.
Decker is a former litigator at Weil, Gotshal & Manges who has worked for the company since 2018. She most recently was compliance chief, deputy general counsel, and global head of litigation, privacy, and labor and employment at McAfee, which makes antivirus software.
A spokesman for San Jose, Calif.-based McAfee confirmed Decker’s new role. She takes over from former McAfee legal chief Sayed Darwish, who left the company in July. McAfee hired Darwish two years ago after its former top lawyer, Ellen “Nell” O’Donnell, left to become legal chief for software outfit ServiceMax Inc.
Chatelle Lynch, chief people officer at McAfee, said via LinkedIn that Decker will report to the company’s new Chief Executive Officer Greg Johnson.
“Sarah embodies the McAfee values in her quest to protect all that matters,” Lynch said. “It has been a privilege to partner with Sarah over the last few years.”
McAfee was started in 1987 by its eponymous founder John McAfee. The cybersecurity pioneer was found dead last year in a Spanish prison cell as he awaited extradition to the US on tax evasion and money laundering charges. John McAfee resigned from his namesake company in 1994, a year after taking it public.
Intel Corp. paid $7.7 billion to buy McAfee in 2011 and later agreed to sell a controlling stake in the business to private equity firm TPG Inc. McAfee would soon go public again, enlisting Ropes & Gray to advise on an initial public offering that raised $740 million in October 2020. Securities filings show the listing generated at least $4.8 million in legal fees and expenses for McAfee’s lawyers.
Ropes & Gray and corporate law boutique Moulton Moore Stella advised McAfee on its sale to a private equity consortium led by Advent International Corp. and Permira Advisers LLP. Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson and Kirkland & Ellis represented the buyers, who completed their purchase of McAfee in March.
McAfee also turned to Ropes & Gray last year for outside counsel on the sale of its enterprise business in a $4 billion all-cash deal to private equity firm Symphony Technology Group, which in a separate transaction paid $1.2 billion to acquire the product business of fellow cybersecurity company FireEye Inc.
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