Movers & shakers: April 21, 2009

President Obama nominated Herbert Allison Jr. to succeed Neel Kashkari as head of the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program. Allison (pictured) would be assistant secretary for financial stability while also being counselor to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. Kashkari joined the Treasury in July 2006 as a senior adviser to then-Secretary Henry Paulson Jr. Before that, Kashkari was a vice president at Goldman, Sachs & Co. in San Francisco, where he led the information technology security investment banking practice.

Allison became CEO of Fannie Mae in September, which received a government bailout after losing big in the mortgage mess. Before that, he was chairman and chief executive of TIAA-Cref. Allison also ran the finance committee for Sen. John McCain's 2000 presidential campaign and spent 30 years at Merrill Lynch & Co.

Separately, William Wilkins, a Washington partner in the tax practice of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP since 1988, was nominated to be chief counsel for the Internal Revenue Service and an assistant general counsel in the Department of the Treasury.

In New York, Jefferies & Co. hired Roy Carlberg as a managing director and head of syndicate in the firm's municipal securities group. Carlberg was most recently a senior managing director at Bear, Stearns & Co., where he managed its municipal securities syndicate effort. Last month, Jefferies closed its acquisition of Depfa First Albany, a municipal securities firm.

At Jefferies, Carlberg reports to Kenneth Gibbs, president of the municipal securities group, and Alan Greco, head of municipal sales and trading.

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

• Nomura Holdings Inc. expanded its European oil and gas equity research team, hiring Alastair Syme and James Talbot from Bank of America Corp.'s Merrill Lynch.
• Rothschild hired David Drinkwater as chairman of Rothschild Canada.
• Private equity firm Kennet Partners tapped Hillel Zidel as a director in London.