Live Events Giant GCL Hires Longtime Fanatics Law Head Yeamans
Bloomberg Law
By Brian Baxter
15 October 2024
Global Critical Logistics LLC, a private equity-owned provider of live events services to clients like NASCAR and the Olympic Games, has hired its first chief legal officer in Caren Yeamans.
She joins GCL after more than a dozen years at Fanatics Holdings Inc., the privately held sports collectibles giant, where she was billionaire founder and CEO Michael Rubin’s first general counsel. Fanatics has been reorganizing its internal legal team over the past year to focus on three distinct business lines: commerce, collectibles, and betting and gaming.
She stepped away from Fanatics’ commerce arm late last year after what she described as a “wonderful run” helping Rubin’s company expand globally into new business verticals. Yeamans had said that she was looking to find her next in-house job at a “company on the rise.”
Shortly before Yeamans transitioned to an advisory role a year ago, Fanatics hired former IAC/InterActivCorp legal chief Gregg Winiarski to be its new general counsel. While at Fanatics, Yeamans had a critical role in negotiating exclusive rights deals with sports leagues and teams, managing global trade licenses and supply chain partners, and creating new business verticals for non-fungible tokens, gambling, and collectibles, GCL said in a statement.
GCL is controlled by New York-based private equity firm ATL Partners and led by Daniel Rosenthal, a former Williams & Connolly associate who joined the company last year as chief executive. The transportation and logistics provider also announced Tuesday its addition of a new president in Stew Heathcote, who will oversee its film, music, sports, and television operations.
Rosenthal said GCL needed a legal chief to help it navigate acquisitions amid an increasingly complex legal environment, and her Fanatics experience should serve her well, Rosenthal said.
The company—owner of brands like Rock-it Cargo, Dietl, and SOS Global—is expanding offerings to everything from corporate events and fine art festivals, to film shoots and auto races.
“Her title reflects the breadth and global nature of the role,” Rosenthal said. “It also reflects my previous experience as a lawyer and my desire to have our top lawyer serve as a strategic adviser to me and our management team.”
Jacob Fisher, a former partner at transportation-focused Scopelitis, Garvin, Light, Hanson & Feary, is a veteran logistics services lawyer who will remain general counsel for GCL. The Scopelitis firm advises GCL on logistics and transportation issues, while Loeb & Loeb handles major partnership agreements. Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher is GCL’s primary outside corporate counsel.
