The Swiss Federal Council nominated vice president Philipp Hildebrand as president of the Swiss National Bank, effective Jan. 1, 2010. He will replace a retiring Jean-Pierre Roth.

Also, Thomas Jordan will become vice president of Swiss National, and Jean-Pierre Danthine will become a new member of the governing board.

Goldman, Sachs & Co.'s Christian Carl will join Zurich Financial Services Group on June 1 to lead its reunited mergers and acquisitions and strategy teams. Carl was a financial institutions group banker at Goldman.

Also on June 1, Inga Beale, Zurich Financial's head of organizational transformation and M&A, will become global chief underwriting officer. Current global chief underwriting officer and head of group strategy Mike Kerner will become CEO, global corporate in North America.

Recently, chief growth officer Patrick O'Sullivan said he would retire on April 30 after more than 11 years with Zurich Financial. Paul Hopkins, CEO of the Americas and chairman of Farmers Group Inc., will assume group management board oversight of global growth activities.

Also, Zurich Financial CEO James Schiro, who was nominated for Goldman's board, will leave the firm when his contract expires at the end of this year. Zurich is searching for a replacement.

Piper Jaffray & Co. tapped Michael Coyne to lead its transportation and logistics business. Coyne joins as a managing director in New York, reporting to Larry Zimmerman, who recently joined Piper as head of industrials and financial sponsor coverage. Coyne arrives after serving as an independent consultant for public logistic companies. Before that, he was a managing director in transportation and logistics at Bear, Stearns & Co. and was a director of equity capital markets at Deutsche Bank Securities Inc.

Separately, Piper added Phoebe Wong and Eric Lau as senior research analysts. Wong will lead the China and Hong Kong consumer research group, and Lau will cover industrial growth, focusing on capital goods and the PRC automobile industry. Wong worked at Lehman Brothers Inc. as a senior research analyst and acting coordinator of its consumer sector. Lau was head of China and Hong Kong industrial research at Deutsche Bank AG.

Public accounting firm Rothstein, Kass & Co. PC hired Jeffrey Kollin as a director in its advisory services group, supervising growth of the financial services advisory practice. Kollin was senior vice president, head of business development, at R3 Capital Management LLC, a global credit-focused hedge fund spun off from Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in 2008, where he was responsible for managing operational and technological infrastructure. Kollin spent more than 10 years at Lehman Brothers as U.S. head of hedge fund consulting, a practice he launched.

Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. tapped James Jennings as a senior adviser. Jennings joined Hunt Oil Co. in 1979 and was appointed to its board in 1991. He was president and then chairman between 1999 and 2007.

Yorkville Advisors HK Ltd. appointed Hyunwoo Barton Lee as a senior vice president, focusing on sourcing and structuring transactions in South Korea and other Asian markets. Lee was previously vice president of global capital markets at Morgan Stanley in Hong Kong, responsible for equity offerings. Before that, he was an associate director, equity capital markets, at UBS in Hong Kong.

Morrison & Foerster LLP created a real estate solutions group, covering mergers and acquisitions, tender offers, spinoffs, joint ventures and bankruptcy, including prepackaged bankruptcies. The initiative is led on the West Coast by Los Angeles partner Michael Cohen and on the East Coast by New York partner Andrew Weiner. The group includes attorneys from the corporate, tax, land use, environmental and litigation practices, in addition to other senior real estate attorneys.

Velocity Venture Capital LLC, a seed- and early-stage VC firm, promoted Farid Dibachi and Henry Montgomery to general partners. Dibachi co-founded Diba, an Internet appliance company acquired by Sun Microsystems Inc. for $100 million. Montgomery was previously chief financial officer at Techfarm Ventures, a Silicon Valley venture fund.

Patton Boggs LLP hired Michael Richman, Mark Salzberg and Erika Morabito as partners. Based in New York, Richman will lead the firm's national bankruptcy practice. Salzberg and Morabito will work from Washington. All join from Foley & Lardner LLP, where Richman was chairman of the bankruptcy and business reorganization practice.

Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP announced that litigator Fred Fielding will join the firm as a partner in Washington on April 15. Fielding, who served in the West Wing during three administrations, most recently as counsel to former President George W. Bush from 2007 to 2009, returns to the firm where he began his legal career as a summer associate in 1963.

Separately, the firm added complex commercial litigators Matthew Siembieda and Timothy Katsiff to its Philadelphia office. They join from Blank Rome LLP.