Rejoining several of his colleagues from his Morgan Stanley days, Vikram Gandhi has signed up with Greenhill & Co. as a senior adviser. Gandhi spent 16 years at Morgan Stanley, including a stint as president and head of Morgan Stanley India. He will focus on clients in Asia and India for Greenhill, a firm whose founder, Robert Greenhill, is a former president of Morgan Stanley's investment bank. Gandhi was also global head of the financial institutions group and vice chairman of the investment banking department at Credit Suisse Group, where he worked from New York and Hong Kong. He recently founded VSG Capital Advisors, which provides cross-border and domestic investment and advisory services across Asia. Gandhi began his career with Tata Industries in Mumbai and has been a senior adviser to the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, focusing on Indian investments. He was a Baker scholar at Harvard Business School with an undergraduate degree from the University of Mumbai.

In another homecoming of sorts, Perella Weinberg Partners LP announced the hiring of Charles "Chuck" Ward, 59, as a partner in its advisory business based in New York. Ward was a protégé of the late Bruce Wasserstein (the founder and former chairman of The Deal LLC) and Joseph Perella at the old First Boston Corp. in the '80s, where he became co-head of mergers and acquisitions. He left to become one of the four founders of Wasserstein Perella & Co. in 1988 with the two name partners and William Lambert, then returned in 1994 to Credit Suisse Group, where he served first as head of global investment banking and private equity, and then was named president in 2000 under then-CEO John Mack. He rejoined Wasserstein at Lazard in 2002 as president and chairman of its asset management group with particular responsibility for emerging markets. Ward left Lazard after Wasserstein's death to serve as chief investment officer and a member of the investment committee at Bahrain-based Arcapita Bank BSC. He received his B.A. in economics at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., and his M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.

Blackstone Group LP is beefing up its China operation. The firm recently brought in Yi Luo as a senior managing director for its Asia private equity team based in Shanghai. He has been with Carlyle Group since 2003. Luo was previously a vice president in Bank of America Merrill Lynch's investment banking division and an executive director, principal investments, at Goldman, Sachs & Co. He also spent time at the Peoples Bank of China. In addition, Blackstone added Edward Huang, a managing director based in Hong Kong, who had been working in Morgan Stanley's private equity unit in Hong Kong. Huang previously worked in New York for Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch & Co. Both men report to Michael Chae, 41, Blackstone's Asia-Pacific private equity chief. Chae, a Yale Law School graduate with degrees from Harvard College and Cambridge University, relocated in 2010 from New York to Hong Kong.

Deutsche Bank AG named James Ratigan as co-head of Americas M&A alongside Tony Whittemore. Ratigan succeeds Bruce Evans, a Goldman, Sachs & Co. veteran, who becomes chairman of Americas M&A. Ratigan joined the firm in 2009, specializing in industrials. A graduate of Brown University, Ratigan previously spent 18 years at Merrill Lynch & Co.

Warburg Pincus tapped healthcare expert Francesco Granata as an executive-in-residence based in London. He was an executive vice president at Biogen Idec Inc., leading its global commercial operations from January 2010. Granata was group vice president and president, Europe and Canada, at Schering-Plough Corp. from 2005 to 2010. He has also worked at Pfizer Inc., Pharmacia Corp., Dompé Biotec SpA, GlaxoSmithKline plc and Dow Chemical Co.

Private equity firm TowerBrook Capital Partners LP tapped Hugh Harper as a managing director. Previously at Mc-Kinsey & Co., he was a partner in London and leader of the European private equity and financial services practices. Harper worked at McKinsey from March 1999 until January. Earlier, he spent eight years at Citibank NA.

Houlihan Lokey Inc. hired Ryan O'Toole as a director in its aerospace, defense and government group. Working from Los Angeles, he reports to Anita Antenucci, senior managing director and head of ADG. O'Toole was a director at Lazard. Before that, he spent seven years at Jefferies Quarterdeck as part of a team that included Antenucci and Warren Romine, a Houlihan ADG director. Earlier, O'Toole played minor league baseball in the Cincinnati Reds organization.

Middle-market private equity firm Irving Place Capital appointed C. Thomas O'Grady and Michael McLain as senior advisers for the firm's industrial practice. O'Grady had been senior vice president of business development at Cooper Industries plc since 2005. He joined Cooper from Roper Industries Inc., where he was vice president of mergers and acquisitions. McLain has worked with Irving Place in various partnership capacities since 2004. He was previously the CEO of Aearo Technologies Inc., where he worked from 1998 to 2008.

Troika Dialog, a Russian brokerage firm recently acquired by OAO Sberbank, hired mergers and acquisitions bankers Dirk Werner and Angelo Morganti as managing directors. Werner was a managing director at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, focused on telecommunications, media and technology in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Before a stint at Millennium Finance Corp., he was head of M&A for Germany at Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. Morganti was most recently a managing director and head of equity corporate finance at Renaissance Capital. Before joining RenCap in 2008, he worked at Salomon Smith Barney and Citigroup Inc. for 10 years. Sberbank, Russia's largest commercial bank, paid $1 billion for Troika Dialog in a deal that closed in January. Sberbank is now creating a corporate investment bank division. Alexander Bazarov, a member of Sberbank's management board, a vice president and the director of the corporate clients department, and Ruben Vardanian, CEO of Troika Dialog, were named co-heads of the CIB. Recent hires for the unit include Rob Leith from Standard Bank plc as a managing director and global head of investment banking and global markets; Todd Berman, head of investment banking; Chris Weafer, chief strategist; Olga Klimova, global head of equity sales; James Corrigan and Maxim Safonov, managing directors in investment banking; and Anton Malkov, an investment banking director.

On the law firm front, Proskauer Rose LLP says Timothy Mungovan joined the firm as a partner in Boston. He was founder and leader of the private fund disputes team and formerly practice group leader of the commercial litigation and financial services and securities litigation practices at Nixon Peabody LLP.

Also at Proskauer, antitrust and intellectual property litigator Alan Kusinitz joined the firm as senior counsel in New York. He practiced in Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP's antitrust and competition group. He was an assistant attorney general to the Antitrust Bureau in the New York State Attorney General's office and spent more than 10 years at Kelley Drye & Warren LLP. The firm tapped Weil antitrust/competition global co-head Helene Jaffe as co-head of its own antitrust group alongside Ronald Rauchberg.

SNR Denton added Lisa Ledbetter as a partner in its financial institutions regulatory practice. Ledbetter was vice president and deputy general counsel at Freddie Mac. She previously worked at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

International corporate and trial lawyer Michael Lacher joined Anderson Kill & Olick PC as a shareholder in the firm's litigation and international business departments in New York. Coming from Lacher & Lovell-Taylor, he brings shareholder Adam Rader and attorneys Kerry Sheehan and Beth Simon.

McDermott Will & Emery LLP named Tom Scott new head of its London tax practice group. Scott was a senior tax partner at KPMG LLP for six years. Before that, he was a tax partner at Linklaters for 15 years, where he focused on the tax aspects of cross-border mergers and acquisitions.

Blaise Brennan joined Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP as of counsel in Washington, focusing on capital markets, mergers and acquisitions, acquisition finance, corporate governance and securities regulatory issues. He was on the executive staff at the Securities and Exchange Commission from 2009 to 2011 as counsel to Commissioners Kathleen L. Casey and Daniel M. Gallagher. Also in Washington, Jeff Steiner joined the firm as counsel. A former special counsel at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Steiner will continue to focus on derivatives and market regulation as a result of the Dodd-Frank Act.

Private equity and finance lawyer Melinda Rishkofski joined Baker Botts LLP as a partner in Moscow. Previously, she served as general counsel for Baring Vostok Capital Partners. She has experience working with International Finance Corp., the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and the Overseas Private Investment Corp. on secured credit and debt and equity financing transactions.

-- Baz Hiralal compiled this report.