Sidley Austin has appointed Alexander Temel and William Schwab as partners in the firm’s Boston office. They are members of Sidley’s global Private Equity practice. Both were formerly with Latham & Watkins. “We are excited to have attracted top talent like Alex and Bill as we continue to expand our private equity capabilities both here in Boston and globally,” says Robert Buhlman, managing partner of Sidley’s Boston office. “Private equity and related transactional work have been part of the strategy for expanding the Boston office since its inception. We believe having Alex and Bill on the ground working with our

Polaris Investment Advisory AG (Polaris), Zurich, has appointed Dr Hanspeter Bader, Baldomero Falcones, Dr Thomas Friese and Matthias Knab as Members of its Senior Advisory Board. “We are delighted to have gained such renowned and globally-networked experts for our company. With this step, we are substantiating our claim of having in-depth expertise and an extensive network in all areas of alternative investments,” says Rolf Dreiseidler, Managing Partner of Polaris.   Bader is regarded as a proven expert in private equity. He worked for Unigestion for 17 years, most recently in the position of Head of Private Equity/Private Assets. Friese most

Life Sciences venture capital firm Sofinnova Partners has appointed Maina Bhaman as Partner. Bhaman comes to Sofinnova Partners with a long track record as a successful healthcare investor. Prior to joining, she was Director of Healthcare Investment at Touchstone Innovations (formerly Imperial Innovations) in London (UK) since 2006. She has led or co-led numerous investments and sat on the Board of a number of UK biotech companies, such as Autifony, Cellmedica, Psioxus Therapeutics, Pulmocide, Topivert Pharma, Puridify (sold to GE), Thiakis (sold to Wyeth) and Respivert (sold to J&J).   Previously, Bhaman worked in the R&D teams of several UK

Eurazeo has appointed Virginie Morgon, the company’s current Deputy CEO, as CEO from 19 March, 2018. Morgon (pictured), will replace Patrick Sayer at the end of his fourth term as CEO and Chair of Eurazeo’s Executive Board. Morgon’s experience and key contribution to numerous successes made her the Supervisory Board’s natural choice for the CEO role. She has been an Executive Board member for ten years and Deputy CEO since 2014. She has considerable experience and a solid international business network. Morgon is a highly regarded professional in Europe, the United States and Asia and is an independent director of

Following its recent acquisition of Bento Sushi (Bento), YO! Sushi (YO!) has appointed Richard Hodgson as Chief Executive Officer, commencing in December. Hodgson was formerly Chief Executive Officer of Pizza Express, where he was instrumental in driving the internationalisation of the business.   As agreed with the Board when Mayfair Equity Partners invested in YO! in November 2015, and with the business delivering strong results and underlying like-for-like growth, Robin Rowland will step down as Chief Executive Officer but remain on the board as a Non-Executive Director. Rowland has led YO! for 18 years, taking it from three London restaurants,

Investec Specialist Bank (Investec) has appointed Megan Chavkin to its Corporate & Acquisition Finance team, led by Callum Bell, Head of Corporate & Acquisition Finance at Investec. Based in the team’s London office, Chavkin will be responsible for the origination and execution of leveraged finance and private debt solutions for clients across Europe.   Chavkin had three years’ experience within the Corporate Investment Bank at Nedbank. There she was a member of the Leveraged Finance team, which focuses on leveraged buyouts, management buyouts, share-backed and sponsor-backed funding in the large-cap corporate space.   Since it was established in 2012, Investec

Hermes GPE, a specialist investor in global private equity, has appointed two new senior investment professionals, Sanjeev Phakey and Fidel Manolopoulos (pictured), who will both be based in the firm’s London office.  These appointments bring Hermes GPE’s investment team to 20 professionals across three offices in London, New York and Singapore.   Phakey joins Hermes GPE from the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) where he spent six years working across the private markets platform. Phakey joins Hermes GPE to focus on fund and co-investments in the EMEA region, which is led by Simon Moss. Prior to joining USS, he worked at

Interswitch, an Africa-focused integrated digital payments and commerce company, has appointed Kenneth Olisa OBE, FRSA, FBCS, as its new Chairman, succeeding Adedotun Sulaiman, MFR. The appointment follows the recent minority investment by TA Associates in Interswitch in March of this year. Helios Investment Partners, which invested in the company in 2011, is majority shareholder of the company.   Olisa is a British businessman with a career in technology that commenced at IBM and spans well over 40 years. He founded and led the technology merchant bank, Interregnum and is also the founder and Chairman of Restoration Partners, an independent boutique