Executive moves, week of June 1, 2009

Canaan hires EIR

has joined venture firm Canaan Partners as an entrepreneur-in-residence. Sharma will work in the firm’s Menlo Park, Calif.-based office and focus on the cloud computing market. Last year, Canaan raised $650 million for Canaan VII and has invested in such virtualization and cloud computing companies as Virsto Software and SOASTA Inc.

Previously, Sharma led Yahoo India R&D, where he was responsible for product engineering for all emerging markets.

Altman steps down as Evercore CEO

New York-based merger advisory firm Evercore Partners has named BlackRock Inc. co-founder Ralph Schlosstein as its CEO, replacing Roger Altman. Altman will remain chairman.

Schlosstein has also become a partner in Evercore and bought $15 million of its equity, Evercore said in a statement. Schlosstein previously worked for Lehman Brothers and co-founded BlackRock, a publicly traded U.S. asset manager, in 1988.

Obama taps Sargeant for SBA post

, a managing director at Venture Investors, has been nominated to the role of chief counsel for advocacy for the Small Business Administration by President Barack Obama. The nomination is subject to Senate confirmation.

Madison, Wis.-based Venture Investors manages $200 million in capital and invests in seed and early stage life science and tech in the Midwest, with a primary focus on university spin outs.

Before Sargeant joined the firm in 2006, he was program manager for the SBA’s Small Business Innovations Research program in electronics from 2001 to 2005.

Former TPG general counsel joins Southlake Equity

has joined middle market private equity firm Southlake Equity Group as a partner and general counsel. Spuria was formerly the general counsel of TPG Capital. Spuria joins Doug Wheat, Tom Keene and Todd Robichaux as partners in the firm.

Perella Weinberg adds two

Perella Weinberg Partners, an advisory firm with offices in London and New York, has added Richard Shinder and Agnes Tang to its restructuring group as managing director and director, respectively. Shinder joins from Goldman Sachs. Tang previously worked at Houlihan Lokey.