Director, Business & Legal Affairs

This is a Full Time Job

FremantleMedia is one of only two global production companies. It has its own production subsidiaries in the UK, US, Germany, France, Holland, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Switzerland, Austria, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Poland, Hungary, Russia, Croatia, Australia, Japan, Indonesia, India, Brazil and Mexico. In all other countries it licenses its entertainment and drama formats direct to broadcasters and local producers. Our formats are diverse and range from Idols, Got Talent, X-Factor, to Neighbours, The Bill, Farmer Wants A Wife and classics such as The Price is Right, Family Feud, To Tell the Truth and Baywatch. FremantleMedia's headquarters are based in London, UK.

FremantleMedia Latin America, based in Miami, initiates and supports program acquisition, production and licensing activities. A small and dedicated team closely works with the group companies in Brazil and Mexico, the sales unit for Colombia, the production unit for Hispanic US and the licensing unit. Recent productions are Idols in Brazil and Puerto Rico, Project Runway for Latin American, The Apprentice in Brazil and Price is Right in Colombia.

FremantleMedia Latin America has a small in-house legal team that manages legal and business affairs matters that arise in its business.

THE ROLE:

• Working with the sales managers and local territory managing directors on the negotiation and drafting of their local commissioning or format licensing deals with local broadcasters in the territories;
• Working with local law firms in the production territories to generate contracts to service the productions such as host and other talent agreements, contestant agreements, composers agreements, etc
• Working with the ancillary rights managers and our London based enterprises unit on the negotiating and drafting of their local merchandising deals;
• Working with the local sponsorship team on the negotiation and drafting of sponsorship deals in relation to FMLA's productions, including advertiser-funded programming
• Assisting in the negotiation of deals for the acquisition of formats, both on a single and multi-territory basis, and then taking responsibility for documenting the acquisition deals;
• Day to day handling of litigation and disputes concerning the production territories; where necessary instructing local external counsels;
• Providing day to day legal and business advice to the territory executives, production teams, sponsorship team and sales managers in relation to their productions, deal-making, rights and regulatory issues;
• Supervising the legal assistant who will support this role;
• Closely working with and reporting into the central legal and business affairs team in London that will supervise and support the role;

SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE:

• At least 3+ years post qualification experience, ideally in the legal work required in television production and licensing; experience in rights acquisition and/or sponsorship would also be beneficial;
• Strong self-confident interpersonal and communications skills;
• A high degree of commercial awareness;
• Strong negotiating and drafting skills;
• Fluent in both English and Spanish.