Movers & shakers: Blackstone taps Laurence Tosi

Where's the Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette connection? Insiders were asking that last week when Blackstone Group LP announced it hired Laurence A. Tosi from Merrill Lynch & Co. as its CFO.

Blackstone president Hamilton "Tony" James has demonstrated a penchant for dipping into his former firm's talent pool when picking up key hires. Among them is Bennett Goodman, who joined Blackstone this year after it bought Goodman's debt hedge fund, GSO Capital Partners LP. Goodman is now head of Blackstone's debt group. And it turns out a GSO connection is what got Tosi, 40, into Blackstone.

Tosi was one of the point men, along with Merrill's head of financial sponsors, Jeff Kaplan, who helped engineer Merrill's investment in GSO in 2007. Tosi, who was COO of Merrill's investment banking group, helped manage Merrill's relationship with Goodman's fund. "He might not have been from DLJ, but he got their blessing," one source says.

Tosi joined Merrill Lynch in 1999 as a managing director in the investment banking group. He was named CFO of the group in 2002, and COO last year.

At Blackstone, Tosi replaces Michael Puglisi, 50, who will become a senior managing director. Puglisi joined Blackstone in 1994.