Rashida La Lande will join the US packaged food conglomerate in January

Kraft Heinz has appointed Gibson Dunn & Crutcher partner Rashida La Lande as its new global general counsel and corporate secretary. The New York corporate lawyer will join the company in mid-January at its Chicago offices.

La Lande, who was not available for comment, replaces general counsel Jim Savina, who the company said in the announcement of the new GC’s hire was leaving to “pursue other opportunities”.

La Lande joined Gibson Dunn in 2000 and focused her practice on complex commercial deals, including mergers and acquisitions, leveraged buyouts, private equity transactions and joint ventures. She represented Kraft Foods in its 2010 acquisition of Cadbury. More recently, she represented Verizon in its $4.5bn (£3.4bn) acquisition of Yahoo, which closed in June.