Oppenheimer & Co. tapped Michael Murphy and Tom Mulkeen as managing directors in the taxable fixed-income sales and trading department. They will report to Robert Lowenthal, senior managing director, taxable fixed-income trading.

They bring four colleagues: Scott Dorsey, Tom Keady, Clemente Cesare and Eric St. John. This group formerly operated Merrill Lynch & Co.'s Long Island, N.Y., global institutional advisory division, which had middle-market institutional relationships with fixed-income investors. Murphy began working at Merrill Lynch in 1983, while Mulkeen arrived in 1984.

Royal Bank of Scotland plc hired two managing directors for the foreign exchange sales team in its global banking and markets Americas division.

Dennis Holman reports to Craig Donaldson, head of financial institutions FX and prime brokerage sales for the U.S. Chad Smith reports jointly to Stefano Lupi, global head of FX bank sales, and to Donaldson. Mehdi Alloula reports jointly to Nick Greenland, head of global financial institutions risk advisory, and to Donaldson. All are based in RBS' Americas headquarters in Stamford, Conn.

Holman joins from Wells Fargo Bank NA, where he was head of real money sales. Smith comes from UBS Investment Bank, where he was a director in FX sales. Alloula was with the investment banking division of Citigroup Inc. in London, working in the issuer solutions group, where he focused on strategic FX, structured funding and rates opportunities for clients in Europe.

Check The Deal Pipeline for updates on these Movers & shakers:

• Lazard established a Chicago-based private equity business with Edgewater Funds.
• Christopher Cox (pictured), chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission from 2005 to 2008, joined Bingham McCutchen LLP.
• Knight Libertas LLC tapped Les Levi as a managing director, head of corporate finance.