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by Baz Hiralal
Rob Solomon joined Accel Partners as a venture partner. He was president and chief operating officer of Groupon Inc., during which time the daily deals website grew from 100 employees to 6,000. Before Groupon, Solomon was a venture partner at TCV and CEO of SideStep, which he merged with Kayak. Solomon was previously a member of Yahoo! Inc.'s executive management team and was senior vice president of commerce.
Proxy advisory firm MacKenzie Partners Inc. is opening a Washington office. It will be led by executive vice president Laurie Connell, a member of the mergers and acquisitions and proxy contest team. She joined the firm in April 2006 after 14 years at MCI Inc., most recently as director of investor relations. In her last year there, Connell was involved in the battle between Verizon Communications Inc. and Qwest Communications for control of MCI and its telecom assets.
AXA Investment Managers names Garry Murdoch as global head of compliance, based in London. Murdoch was a technical specialist in the asset management department at the Financial Services Authority.
Private equity firm Resilience Capital Partners hired Theodore Laufik as chief financial and compliance officer and Robert Northrop as senior vice president, operations group. It also promoted Michael Cavanaugh to partner and Megan McPherson to vice president. Laufik spent more than 25 years at Morgenthaler and Foundation Medical Partners. Northrop was an associate partner with McKinsey & Co. in Cleveland.
Atlantic-Pacific Capital, a placement agent and advisory firm, hired Peter Larsen as a principal to evaluate financial sponsor prospects. Larsen previously spent 11 years at Hamilton Lane Advisors, most recently as a principal. Earlier, he was a consultant to a biotechnology incubator, then worked in the private funds group at WR Hambrecht + Co. and in the institutional and trading department at Charles Schwab Capital Markets.
Robert L. Symonds Jr. and Matthew J. O'Toole, formerly of the Delaware office of Stevens & Lee, and Thomas A. Mullen, formerly of Prickett, Jones & Elliott PA, joined Potter Anderson & Corroon LLP as partners.
Symonds, one of the original drafters of the Delaware Limited Liability Company Act, was with the corporate, finance and capital markets practice of Stevens & Lee. He has spent his nearly 30-year career serving as Delaware counsel to lenders, borrowers, investors, managers, trustees and other parties in domestic and international business transactions. O'Toole focuses on the structure and use of Delaware business entities, including corporations, limited liability companies, partnerships and statutory trusts.
Mullen advises clients on Delaware corporate and alternative entity law matters, and provides third-party legal opinions in commercial transactions subject to Delaware law.
Zhong Lun Law Firm, a 700-lawyer firm with six offices across China and offices in Hong Kong, London and Tokyo, now has a New York office. The firm brought in Philip Zhang and T.K. Chang to lead the office.
Zhang has been practicing law in China since 1990 and spent two years at Singapore's Rodyk & Davidson LLP before getting a JD at Columbia University. He later became an attorney at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP and Bingham McCutchen LLP, then was special counsel to Phillips Nizer LLP and a partner of Hodgson Russ LLP in New York. He has covered mergers and acquisitions, securities, banking, foreign direct investment in China and real estate.
Chang was a partner at Ivy Law Group LLC, managing attorney of the Beijing office of Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison LLP and a partner at Coudert Brothers LLP in Hong Kong. Chang also worked at Holberg Industries LLC in Greenwich, Conn., and its various affiliates, including Steamboat Industries Inc. His ties there began with his Harvard Business School roommate John V. Holten, founder of Holberg/Steamboat.
Chang has handled securities, securities litigation, M&A, finance and banking and intellectual property.
Corporate and securities litigator Jonathan A. Shapiro joined Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo PC as a member and the head of the firm's West Coast litigation practice. He previously established Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP's West Coast securities department.
Edwards Wildman Palmer LLP added Howard H. Jiang as a partner and Jie Xiu as counsel in its business law department, resident in New York. They cover mergers and acquisitions, business ventures, and securities and corporate governance. Jiang was a partner at Troutman Sanders LLP.
The Houston office of K&L Gates LLP welcomed Anthony F. Newton as a partner in its energy and infrastructure projects and transactions practice. He joins the firm from Haynes and Boone LLP. He represents clients in the oil and gas exploration and production, oilfield services and storage sectors of the energy industry on corporate, finance, private equity and tax matters.
Shefsky & Froelich elected Kathryn Kovitz Arnold as chairwoman of the real estate practice. She succeeds Anthony Licata, who has held the position since joining the firm in 1995 and who will chair the private client practice. Arnold has been with the firm for 24 years and chairs the condominium practice.
Proxy advisory firm MacKenzie Partners Inc. is opening a Washington office, led by executive vice president Laurie Connell.
