Around the house

Support.com has hired Michelle Johnson from Oracle as its general counsel and corporate secretary. Ms Johnson will replace Greg Wrenn who is moving into private practice. At Oracle, she was managing counsel in the Corporate, Securities and Acquisitions group and headed up many of Oracle’s most significant acquisitions during her seven-year tenure, overseeing acquisitions such as SaaS provider RightNow Technologies, Eloqua and MICROS Systems. 

Richard Walker will retire as general counsel at the end of the year from Deutsche Bank. Mr Walker will be succeeded by Simon Dodds and Christof von Dryander, deputy general counsels since 2013. He will become vice chairman and remain on its group executive committee. 

Barclays Bank has appointed Simon Croxford to take over from its outgoing deputy general counsel Michael Shaw. Mr Croxford will become GC of Group Centre Legal, the new title for the job and will report directly to group GC Bob Hoyt. He was previously Asia Pacific GC, followed by a stint in the European investment banking division. Prior to this, he worked at Linklaters and Swiss bank UBS.

Muna Dandan is to become general counsel for the Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA).  As general counsel, Ms Dandan will be responsible for the entirety of legal work carried out by the regulator. She will replace outgoing general counsel Michael Ridgeway. Errol Hoopman, managing director of policy and legal services is also leaving as his contract is at an end. 

Recruitment company Major Lindsay & Africa was responsible for recruiting AOL deputy general counsel Damien Atkins to Panasonic North America as general counsel and corporate secretary, it has announced. Mr Atkins has held numerous roles in his 10 years with AOL where he most recently served as senior vice president, deputy general counsel and chief compliance officer, overseeing securities regulation, corporate governance, labor & employment and global compliance matters. He joined AOL from Chadbourne & Parke  where his practice focused on a wide variety of mergers & acquisitions, capital markets and securities law matters.