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— Movers and Shakers —
New York's Gramercy Capital Corp. brought in Timothy O'Connor as president. He was most recently chief operating officer of real estate investment trust iStar Financial Inc. The commercial real estate veteran joined iStar in 1998 and has worked at Morgan Stanley, Greystone Realty Corp. and Exxon Mobil Corp. In late October, Gramercy made Roger Cozzi CEO, replacing Marc Holliday, who is leaving the post he held since the firm's inception in 2004. Also, chief investment officer Andrew Mathias and chief credit officer Gregory Hughes stepped down. They will remain as consultants through Sept. 30, 2009. Cozzi was most recently a managing director at Fortress Investment Group LLC. Cozzi was also chief investment officer for iStar, where he worked from 1998 to 2007. Cairn Capital Ltd. enlisted Peter Hansell to run its new real estate fund. The Ibex Fund will invest in commercial mortgage debt. Hansell was a managing director in Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.'s global real estate group. Before Lehman, he ran the Standard & Poor's commercial mortgage backed securities rating team in Europe and was a senior relationship manager specializing in commercial real estate related lending at Royal Bank of Scotland plc. Investment banking and brokerage firm Stephens Inc. hired Jennifer Herber as a managing director in corporate finance. Based in New York, Herber is responsible for originating underwriting and mergers and acquisitions advisory business in the specialty retail and consumer sectors. Coverage will focus on apparel and home retail and household and personal care. Before this, Herber was an executive director in the consumer-retail group at J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. From 2001 to 2006, she worked at Peter J. Solomon Co. as a director advising on M&A. Keith Costa joined Akerman Senterfitt's bankruptcy practice as a shareholder in New York. Also, Scott McMahon and Martin Hayes joined the litigation practice as shareholders in the Tampa and Tallahassee, Fla., offices, respectively. Previously, Costa served with the Department of Justice for 11 years as assistant U.S. trustee for the Southern District of New York and as senior trial attorney for the District of Connecticut. Greenberg Traurig LLP announced that James Wang joined its New York office as a shareholder in the corporate and securities practice and the Asia practice group. Wang arrives from Kirkland & Ellis LLP. He will focus on the private investment funds practice. Alston & Bird LLP said Brian Betancourt joined the firm as a partner in New York. He was previously a partner at Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP. Betancourt focuses on financing of energy and infrastructure projects, as well as asset acquisitions and divestitures. Intellectual property firm Townsend and Townsend and Crew LLP hired A. James Isbester as a partner in San Francisco. He focuses on patent litigation and pre-litigation counseling. Isbester returns to Townsend, which he left in 1996, from Isbester & Thackray LLP, a firm he established and led for seven years. In San Diego, Duane Morris LLP tapped Julie Vogelzang as a partner in its employment and immigration practice group. She was formerly a partner at Luce, Forward, Hamilton & Scripps LLP. Germany's Beiten Burkhardt elected nine equity partners for Jan. 1: Svetlana Herbel, procedural and intellectual property law, Wolfgang Lipinski, labor; Volker Mergener, real estate; Rudolf Mikus, corporate tax; Julian Ries, head of real estate law in the Kyiv, Ukraine, office; corporate attorney Roland Startz; Falk Tischendorf, real estate and commercial; Holger Weimann, IP, information technology and media; and real estate attorney Natalia Wilke, head of the St. Petersburg office. The firm also named 16 salaried partners: Jörg Bielefeld, Mikhail Borodin, Felix Haffner, Pawel Kuglarz, Christian Kuhn, Oliver Schniewind, Vasily Yermolin and Oscar Yu, corporate; Bogdan Borovyk and Katrin Witte, mergers and acquisitions; Jochen Keilich, Doris Kilg, Marc Spielberger and Inka Zielski, labor; Stephan Rechten, public/procurement; and Alexandra Zech, banking and finance. Retired Massachusetts Superior Court judge Elizabeth Butler joined Jams, a provider of alternative dispute resolution services. She covers business commercial, contracts, employment, insurance, medical malpractice, personal injury and real estate. From 1983 to 1990, Butler was a litigation attorney at Boston's Morrison Mahoney LLP. Butler began her legal career as an assistant district attorney in the Middlesex County district attorney's office, where she worked from 1975 to 1977. |
Citigroup Inc. CEO Vikram Pandit plans to cut about 53,000 jobs, as well as 20% in expenses, in the near term. That is in addition to the 10,000 layoffs it announced earlier. Citi is cutting about 20% of its workforce from a peak of 375,000 employees in December 2007. 
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