About

Mark Beariault has served as the general counsel and head of legal affairs for the world leader in digital security and convergent media solutions, Kudelski Group, since April 2011. Beariault has guided the company in its aim of offering technologies and products for providing access control and digital rights management to secure television and media content through its subsidiaries Nagravision and Conax. He has additionally assisted in cybersecurity services to help companies assess, prevent and protect against cyber-attacks, through Kudelski Security, and solutions for physical access control and management of people and vehicles to sites and events. He previously served as senior vice president, general counsel and secretary of OpenTV Corp, an early technology innovator in the field of interactive television based in San Francisco, California, which was acquired by the Kudelski Group in 2010. He has also served in a range of senior legal positions at Veritas software, a provider of data storage software, and OmniSky Corp, a wireless data company. Transitioning from a smaller US-based software company to the general counsel of a Swiss-based multi-national company has been a highlight for Beariault: ‘This move required me to adapt to the culture and practises of a European company. I quickly realised that imposing a US-style legal practice would have been a mistake on a number of levels. Instead, I tried to marry best practices and perspectives among my diverse and talented team’. The result has been an improvement in both the quality and the breadth of legal services they are able to provide to the company and an enhanced reputation of the legal team within the company. A top priority for Beariault has been to foster better alignment of the legal department with the company’s business needs, ‘my legal team’s mission statement is to be a trusted business partner to the Kudelski Group’, he says. He has also established primary legal contacts for each business unit to facilitate information exchange, ensured a location mix for the team that anticipates future business needs, including regional hiring activity to add local legal expertise, language abilities and challenging each member of the team to expand their professional skills through additional training, education and job responsibilities. ‘After seven plus years in my current role, I’m proud to say that the Kudelski Group has a talented and diverse legal team that is well-respected and valued for its input throughout the organisation’, says Beariault. Prior to making the move in-house, he was a corporate lawyer at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett in New York, and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati in Palo Alto, California. From 2016 until 2018, he also served as a member of The United States Investment Advisory council, which advises the US secretary of commerce on foreign investment into the country.