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by Baz Hiralal
Legg Mason Inc. chairman and CEO Mark Fetting will step down on Oct 1. He joined the money manager in 2000 from Prudential Financial Group.
Fetting, who replaced previous CEO and founder Raymond Mason in 2008, will stay on as a consultant until the end of the year. Lead independent director W. Allen Reed will become nonexecutive chairman, and Joseph Sullivan, head of global distribution, will become interim CEO, while the board looks for a permanent replacement.
Lazard Australia will acquire O'Sullivan Partners, a Sydney-based advisory firm led by Tony O'Sullivan and Garren Cronin. O'Sullivan will become head of investment banking for Lazard in Sydney, reporting to John Wylie, CEO of Lazard Australia, who heads investment banking and private equity. Cronin will become a managing director of Lazard.
O'Sullivan was previously a London-based managing director of Bank of America Corp., responsible for European coverage. Cronin was a senior vice president at Citigroup Investment Banking, advising financial institutions.
Fund manager Standard Life Investments said Wesley McCoy rejoined the firm as an investment director in the global equities team. He originally joined Standard Life in 1999 and left in 2008 to pursue charity work in Malawi with the Microloan Foundation. McCoy then worked for Odey Asset Management on its global multiasset hedge fund.
Avista Capital Partners hired Brian Markison as a healthcare industry executive. He was most recently president and CEO of Fougera Pharmaceuticals. Before that, he was chairman and CEO of King Pharmaceuticals, which he joined as chief operating officer in March 2004.
WTP Advisors spun out its capital markets division, Avalon Lake Partners. It will be led by Lou Sala, Jay Goldstein and Ilicia Silverman and will move away from tax advisory work to provide a broader set of advisory services to the alternative asset management industry. Sala is managing partner and CEO, Goldstein is a partner, and Silverman is a partner and head of business development.
Peter Lurie will become senior vice president of business development and general counsel of Leap Motion Inc., a motion-control software and hardware company. Lurie has been senior vice president for strategic partnerships and business development with American Express Co.'s enterprise growth group.
Previously, he co-founded Virgin Mobile USA and helped guide it from startup phase to initial public offering to its eventual $483 million acquisition by Sprint Nextel Corp.
New York-based strategic and merger and acquisition advisory firm Foros LLC added Bill Bock as a senior adviser. Bock is a director of Silicon Laboratories Inc., FiftyOne Inc., SailPoint Technologies Inc., UnboundID Corp. and Worksoft Inc. He was senior vice president of finance and administration and chief financial officer of Silicon Laboratories from 2006 to 2011. Prior to that, he was a general partner of CenterPoint Ventures and Verity Ventures.
Loeb & Loeb LLP added four lawyers to its trusts and estates department in Washington. The group is led by partner Mary Ann Mancini and includes senior counsel Susan Blumenthal and Tanya Harvey and associate Caitlin Murphy. They previously practiced at Bryan Cave LLP.
Expanding its mergers and acquisitions practice, White & Case LLP added Darragh Byrne as a partner in the firm's Stockholm office. He joins from Linklaters LLP and brings with him senior associate Christian Holmberg.
Hunton & Williams LLP said Ronald Rubin, an enforcement attorney at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, joined the firm as a partner in Washington. He will be part of the firm's 30-member bankruptcy, restructuring and creditors' rights team.
DLA Piper announced that Anastasia Kelly and Michael Poulos will become its U.S. co-managing partners, effective Jan. 1. They will join the incoming leadership team of Roger Meltzer and Cameron Rains, who will become U.S. co-chairs for a four-year term starting in January.
Kelly is a partner in DLA Piper's corporate and finance and public company and corporate governance practices, as well as the white-collar corporate crime and investigations group. She joined the firm in 2010 after a 15-year career as general counsel in four public companies: American International Group Inc.; MCI/WorldCom, Sears, Roebuck and Co. and Fannie Mae.
Poulos is co-managing partner of the firm's Chicago office, regional chair of the U.S. litigation practice and a member of the firm's U.S. executive committee.
Morris, Manning & Martin LLP established a crisis management practice, a subpractice within the litigation group. Robert Alpert Sr. joined as senior counsel to help run the new practice. Alpert previously ran his own crisis management consulting business, International Claims and Litigation Management Group, or ICALM Group.
Clippings from the next column:
-- Third Avenue Management LLC names David Resnick, formerly chairman of Rothschild Inc.'s global financing advisory practice, as president.
-- State Street Global Advisors appoints Greg Ehret as global chief operating officer, a new role.
-- Peter Holowka becomes head of E-foreign exchange at Troika Dialog.
-- Standard Chartered names Patrick Lee as head of origination and client coverage, and co-head wholesale banking, Singapore.
Morris, Manning & Martin LLP established a crisis management practice, a subpractice within the litigation group. Robert Alpert Sr. joined as senior counsel.
