Create Music Group Names Hayley Silvertown Its Chief Legal and Business Affairs Officer

Create Music Group has named Hayley Silvertown as its Chief Legal and Business Affairs Officer, the company announced on Thursday, 29 October 2026, according to Music Business Worldwide.

The role covers the company's legal and business affairs, which means the contracts and deal-making that keep a music company running. Silvertown will also work with the executive team on strategic transactions, investments and partnerships. She will be based at Create's headquarters in Hollywood, California, and reports to a leadership team led by co-founder and chief executive Jonathan Strauss.

Silvertown is not new to the company. She advised Create as outside counsel for more than three years, meaning she worked as a lawyer from an outside firm rather than as an employee. She joined the company from the law firm Paul Hastings, where she was Of Counsel, a senior adviser title for lawyers who work with a firm without being a partner.

Her career has included stints at the law firms Willkie Farr & Gallagher and Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton. She also worked in the business affairs departments of the talent agency ICM and the publisher Warner Chappell Music. Create says she brings more than a decade of experience to the job.

Her recent work has involved some of Create's largest deals. A Paul Hastings team that she led advised Create in the management buyout of Nettwerk Music Group, a deal valued at over USD 300 million, reported in February 2026. A management buyout is a transaction in which a company's managers take control of it. In March 2025, Create bought the Deadmau5 catalogue and label in a deal worth more than $55 million. Sid Fohrman and Silvertown, both of Paul Hastings, acted as legal advisers on that purchase. A catalogue is a company's collection of recordings and songs that keeps earning money over time.

The money behind those deals has also grown. In March 2026, Create completed a funding round that raised more than $450 million in new equity and debt capital, which valued the company at $2.2 billion. Equity means shares sold to investors. Debt means money borrowed and repaid with interest. The valuation is the price the company's worth was set at during that round.

For a company that buys catalogues and raises money on this scale, the legal team is where each agreement is drafted, checked and signed. Silvertown's appointment moves someone who already knows those deals from the outside to a seat inside the company.