Meb Somani joined Barclays Capital's natural resources principal investment business, headed by Mark Brown. Somani was head of oil and gas at Actis Capital. He was previously a managing director at Harrison Lovegrove & Co., advising clients including international and national oil companies on acquisitions and divestments in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Before that, Somani (pictured) spent 20 years with Royal Dutch Shell plc and Texaco Inc.

Morgan Stanley named Richard Surrency head of Asia Pacific transition management. Surrency was most recently head of sales at Bank of New York Mellon Corp.

Deutsche Bank AG appointed James Freeman as head of banking research. He replaces Ross Brown, who will take a one-year sabbatical, and will report to Tim King, who returns from sabbatical to resume his role as head of company research for Australia and New Zealand.

Freeman joins existing research analysts Victor German and Prue Rydstrand. Freeman comes over from Goldman Sachs JBWere Pty. Ltd., where he was a senior banking analyst, primarily covering all major Australian-listed banks.

ING Groep NV will nominate Patrick Flynn to its executive board on April 27. He will become chief financial officer. Flynn is now CFO of HSBC plc's global insurance business, based in London. Previously, he was CFO for its banking and insurance operations in South America from 2002 to 2006. He joined HSBC in 1989.

Subject to approval by the Dutch central bank, Flynn will succeed John Hele, who said in October he will leave ING and relocate to the U.S. for family reasons. On April 1, he will become CFO of Arch Capital Group, a Nasdaq-quoted international insurer.

Fund of hedge funds firm Harcourt Investment Consulting AG will bring in Stephan Fritz as its CEO on March 1. Fritz has been a member of the executive board since 2006 and was most recently responsible for the research department. Current CEO Peter Fanconi will become head of private banking of the Vontobel Group.

Doug Colandrea is now a managing director in the debt capital markets division of Broadpoint Capital Inc., focusing on the telecom, cable, media and entertainment sectors.

Most recently, Colandrea worked at J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., where he was a managing director in the portfolio strategies group with the financial analytics and structured transaction department. Before that, he was a senior managing director at Bear, Stearns & Co. from 2002 to 2008, where he was head of corporate bond research.

Before Bear, Colandrea spent six years as a senior credit analyst at Morgan Stanley, which he joined from Prudential Insurance Co. of America.

In New York, Guggenheim Partners Asset Management Inc. hired Sarah Lange as a managing director. She will focus on business development in the insurance and fund-of-funds markets.

Lange was a managing director at TCW, responsible for its insurance client development and relationship management across the U.S. Lange has also been executive vice president and head of portfolio management for Aegon NV's U.S. investments, chief investment officer of Provident Mutual Life Insurance Co. and president of Market Street Investment Management.

Communications attorney Philip Verveer joined Jenner & Block LLP as of counsel in Washington. Verveer was a partner for more than 25 years in the Washington office of Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP, where he founded the communications practice.

Between 1969 and 1981, Verveer worked in the federal government as a trial attorney in the Justice Department, a supervisory attorney in the Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Competition, and as chief of the Cable Bureau, the Broadcast Bureau and the Common Carrier Bureau of the Federal Communications Commission.

Epstein Becker & Green PC hired seven bankruptcy and corporate reorganization lawyers in New York. The team arriving from Dreier LLP is led by Paul Traub, former co-chair of the bankruptcy and corporate reorganization practice at the firm. It includes partners Steven Fox, Wendy Marcari and Maura Russell and associates Brett Nizzo, Anthony Stumbo and Bradford Tobin.

The bankruptcy team was previously at Traub, Bonacquist & Fox LLP, where Traub was a founding member and managing partner.

Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP welcomed William Burck to the firm's investigations and criminal defense practice as a partner in Washington. Burck was a senior adviser in the White House, most recently as deputy counsel to former President George W. Bush.

Before his service in Washington, Burck was an assistant U.S. attorney in the U.S. attorney's office for the Southern District of New York. Previously, he was an associate at Sullivan & Cromwell LLP.