In May, when Kindler became chief executive officer of Boston Market, he kept the job of McDonald’s general counsel but stepped aside as U.S. general counsel. He gave Santona the job of chief legal officer of McDonald’s single biggest business unit (the U.S. market represents roughly 40 percent of the company’s operations).

Santona had worked her way up the corporate ladder since 1977, when she graduated cum laude from University of Michigan Law School and first joined the McDonald’s legal department. During those years she served as the chair of the National Hispana Leadership Institute’s corporate board of advisers.

Marco Pagni, vice president and general counsel international

Pagni was appointed to his current position in August 1999 and given responsibility for all of McDonald’s legal affairs outside of North America. He, too, worked his way up to the job. He joined McDonald’s in 1993 as European legal counsel, based in London, and oversaw the company’s legal affairs in Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, and the U.K.

In 1997 Pagni moved to McDonald’s headquarters in Oak Brook, Ill., where he was counsel for McDonald’s operations in the Far East and Latin America. Pagni speaks a number of Romance languages as well as English and German. His areas of expertise are franchising, corporate, and European Community antitrust law.

Phillip Rudolph, vice president and deputy general counsel