DÉJ MAHONEY – DIRECTOR

Déj has spent over twenty-five years operating at high level in the entertainment business and is a founding director of All Our Business Ltd (AOB), a boutique legal and business consultancy operating in the music, media, leisure and related fields. In 2018, he was seconded to the senior management team of Warner/Chappell Music  Publishing and in 2020, he was appointed to the newly created position of Non-Executive Chair of West One Music Group, one of the leading independent production music companies worldwide.

During his extensive, legally-focused career at Sony Music UK, Dej was VP of Business Affairs and New Media Development, reporting to the Chairman. In addition to his primary responsibility for contractual dealings with Sony’s artistes, his portfolio included strategic management and the distribution of music in TV, film, digital and other media. In this strategic role, he was a founding member of Sony’s (Intercompany) Synergy Committee and represented Sony Music at the Music Industry Forum, chaired by the U.K’s Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport.

Déj’s multifaceted dealings at AOB have ranged from the legal and business representation of a creative director at luxury goods giant LVMH to devising and delivering a user-friendly, Legal & Business Affairs training programme for senior executives of Sony Music Europe.

Through AOB’s activities in event production, Dej also became a founding director of the World Freerun Championships, the ‘live’, multi-platform event, last staged in London’s Trafalgar Square. He later took on the mantle of producer of the original musical drama, I DREAM, based on the life of Martin Luther King Jr., which was staged in 2018 as a Rhythm & Blues opera with Opera Carolina in the USA. In another international, business and strategic role under the AOB banner, Déj is a founding director and equity partner of Young Voices International, Guinness World Record-accredited organisers of the world’s largest children’s choir concerts.

Since 2012, Dej has sat on the governing board of the BRIT School for the Performing Arts, which has produced outstanding talent such as Adele, Jessie J, Leona Lewis, Tom Holland and many more. He is currently Chair of the School’s Governance Committee. For several years during his earlier career, Dej was a visiting lecturer on the Commercial Music degree course at the University of Westminster in London. He was a contributing author of ‘Digitisation and the Music Industry’ (International Association of Entertainment Lawyers) and became a Member of the Mayor’s Creative Commission for London.

Dej is a graduate in Law from Cambridge University and was called to the Bar of England and Wales as a Harmsworth Award winner.

See Déj’s Scrapbook Selection