Service Providers

Avalon Lake Partners, an advisory firm for the alternative asset management industry, has appointed Michael Byl as a director. Byl will manage marketing and client-facing activities, and also work with the compliance team on regulatory issues.

Baird has added Jim Conniff to the firm’s investment banking industrial team as a managing director. He will be based in Chicago. Conniff returns to Baird from Goldman Sachs where he was a senior member of Goldman Sachs’s industrial banking team. Earlier in his career, Conniff was a director in Baird’s industrial investment banking team.

Financial advisory and investment banking firm Duff & Phelps Corp. has hired Chad Burns as a managing director in the San Francisco office. Burns is a member of the transaction advisory services practice, part of the alternative asset advisory business. Prior to joining Duff & Phelps, Burns was a senior vice president in Houlihan Lokey’s San Francisco office.

The law firm Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo has appointed Adam Gale, former head of Chadbourne & Parke’s hedge fund practice group, as a member in the corporate and securities section. Based in the New York office, Gale will work on structuring, formation and fundraising efforts of hedge funds and private equity funds. Additionally, he represents numerous institutional investors in their investments into all fund types.