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by Baz Hiralal
After 18 years with UBS, Robert Wolf is leaving the firm to start advisory and consulting firm 32 Advisors LLC. Wolf, who has close ties with President Obama, will remain as a senior adviser, providing client advice and solutions. He has been a member of the group executive board, chairman and CEO of UBS Americas, president and chief operating officer of UBS Investment Bank, global head of fixed income and chair of the firm's diversity and community affairs committee.
UBS will be a client of 32 Advisors.
Blackstone Group LP named Joe Baratta as head of global private equity. He currently oversees European private equity from London and is a member of the executive committee. Senior managing director Robert Reid recently moved to the London office while senior managing director Lionel Assant is now the senior partner there.
Baratta, who will move to New York in September, will also join Blackstone's management committee. He started working at the firm in 1998 and helped open its London office in 2001.
MTS Health Partners LP hired Vince Lambert as a senior managing director. Lambert was a managing director in the healthcare group at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, which he joined in 1999. He covered dialysis, diagnostic labs, home health and outsourcing and distribution. He began his investment banking career at Dean Witter Reynolds in 1993 and worked at Credit Suisse Group.
Wells Fargo Securities LLC, the capital markets and investment banking business of Wells Fargo & Co., brought in Bill Brenizer and David Cheney as managing directors in the industrials investment banking group in New York. Brenizer will work with capital goods clients, focusing on larger, multi-industry companies. Cheney will focus on the metals and mining sector as well as construction materials and services. They report to John Church, head of industrials.
Brenizer began his investment banking career in 1978 at Dillon, Read & Co. and worked at UBS from 1997 until 2004. He was a managing director in its global industrials group. He joined Sagent Advisors LLC in 2004.
Most recently, Cheney was a managing director at Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., responsible for metals and mining. He worked at JPMorgan Securities LLC from 1998 to 2005 and then joined Wachovia Capital Markets LLC.
Standard Chartered Bank plc named Richard Jaggard as head of transaction banking for Europe, based in London. He was head of sales for global payments and cash management in Asia-Pacific for seven years at HSBC plc in Hong Kong.
Gold Bullion International LLC, an institutional precious metals provider to individual investors and the wealth management industry, named former Goldman, Sachs & Co. partners Steven Feldman and Eric Schwartz as CEO and chairman, respectively.
Feldman co-founded GBI in 2009 and will now work there full time. He specialized in real assets at Goldman and was founder and head of its global infrastructure fund business. Former CEO Savneet Singh becomes president, focusing on international expansion opportunities and capital markets.
Schwartz is a private investor and is chairman of insurance firm Jefferson National, a director of consumer lending platform Prosper Marketplace Inc. and of Mumbai-based Indostar Capital Finance. Earlier in his career, Schwartz was a Goldman partner and co-headed the investment management and global equities divisions. He was also on its management committee.
Istithmar World, the private equity and venture capital arm of Dubai World Corp., named its head of real estate, Hamza Mustafa, its CEO. Before joining Istithmar in 2009, he was a managing director of The World project in Dubai and a managing director in Nakheel International's emerging markets group.
Commonfund hired Irakli Odisharia from Goldman Sachs Asset Management as a director, risk management. Odisharia reports to chief risk officer David Belmont.
Pramerica Real Estate Investors enlisted Alfonso Munk as chief investment officer, Latin America. Munk was a managing director with Morgan Stanley Real Estate Investing, where he worked in Europe and South America for the past 10 years. Most recently, he was responsible for real estate investing activities in southern Europe. Before that, he was region head for South America, based in São Paulo.
Dallas private equity firm Cotton Creek Capital said Anil Ali joined the firm as an associate. He was an analyst with Harris Williams & Co. in Boston, focused on mergers and acquisitions and minority private placements.
Hinshaw & Culbertson LLP announced that Robert Wagner joined the firm's insurance services practice in Springfield, Ill. Wagner was general counsel of the Illinois Department of Insurance since 2003 and was acting director of the agency from late 2011 to early 2012.
Previously, from 1989, he was general counsel for the Illinois Comprehensive Health Insurance Plan.
Crowell & Moring LLP added two tax controversy and litigation partners to the firm's tax group in Washington: David Blair and David Fischer. Blair joins from Miller & Chevalier Chartered and Fischer joins from Cooley LLP.
Clippings from the next column:
-- Citigroup Inc. hires Willard McLane as head of corporate and investment banking for the ASEAN region and head of FIG, APAC.
-- Credit Suisse Group taps David Hammond as global head of metals and mining.
-- Kevin Cook joins RBC Capital Management as a managing director in the U.S. technology global investment banking group.
Wells Fargo Securities LLC brought in Bill Brenizer and David Cheney as managing directors in the industrials investment banking group in New York.
