First Reserve promotes CFO

Connecticut-based First Reserve Corporation has promoted its chief financial officer, Jennifer Zarrilli, to managing director.

Zarilli's promotion brings the number of managing directors at the energy-focused firm to 12. ?Jenny Zarrilli has been an integral part of the First Reserve team for 10 years,? said chief executive Bill Macauley in a statement.

Jenny joined the firm in 1998 after spending six years at private equity firm Quadrant Management where she was a financial executive. She was brought into First Reserve shortly after the firm had closed Fund VIII on $812 million to help ?take the firm to the next level in terms of accounting,? Zarrilli said.

Over the last 10 years, Zarrilli has built the back office accounting team from ?two or three? to 10 people. She also notes growth among the other back office groups including marketing, legal and IT. In her new role, she will focus more on ?integrating the back office into the office in general.?

The firm previously promoted Tim Day, Joe Bob Edwards and Hardy Murchison to managing director in June 2007. These promotions are the latest in a period of expansion for First Reserve dating back to January of last year when the firm promoted six professionals to vice president.

At the time, the firm also named Anne Gold chief administrative officer in addition to her role as general counsel, and promoted Kristen Custar to director of investor relations, though subsequently she left the firm to join New York-based The Jordan Company as chief administrative officer and head of IR. Since then, Caitlyn MacDonald has joined First Reserve as director of marketing and communications. Prior to First Reserve, MacDonald was investment manager at SVG Advisers, the fund of funds advisor, where she was responsible for industry research and fund manager analysis and selection.

First Reserve is among the largest private equity firms in the world investing solely in the energy industry, with offices in London and Houston as well as its headquarters in Greenwich, CT. Its most recent fund, First Reserve Fund XI, closed on nearly $8 billion in 2006, triple the size of its previous offering. The firm is now raising its 12th fund, targeting $12 billion.

Germany debt law targets ?locusts?
A draft bill emanating from the German Ministry of Justice could restrict the volume of investments in distressed debt. The draft legislation would give borrowers the option to inhibit investors purchasing their debt by having the right to opt for a non-assignable loan at the time of concluding the loan agreement. Under the plans, there would also be a duty to inform borrowers if their loan was assigned to an investor, coupled with the right to damages if the lender compulsorily enforced repayment before default actually occurred. The right to damages would apply even if the lender had not been negligent in foreclosing a loan. The law, which could come into force later this year if agreed by the German Parliament, was described by one advisor as ?protectionist,? building on past government hostility towards private equity and hedge funds investors, particularly those based in London and New York. That includes Lone Star Funds, the US investor that invested heavily in non-performing loan portfolios in Germany in the first half of the decade and was famously branded ?locust? by the now retired German vice chancellor Franz Müntefering. Annerose Tashiro, a lawyer at the German firm Schultze & Braun, said: ?Such legislation will hurt more (firms) than the so-called locusts. In fact, big losers will also be banks operating in Germany and also German businesses looking for loans.?

UK pension group launches tool to judge consultants
The UK's National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF) has announced the launch of an independent toolkit to help trustees assess the performance of investment consultancies. The toolkit includes four distinct elements: a survey of pension funds in their satisfaction with their consultants; a scorecard to judge consultants in several client service areas; a template that pension funds can use to request comparable information from each investment consultancy participating in a tender process; and a list of 18 principles envisaged as an industry standard that all investment consultancies could subscribe to in their professional relationship with clients and their agents. The NAPF is currently working with pension funds and investment consultants to develop the principles. ?The resulting toolkit will help both pension fund trustees and consultancies improve their working relationships to the benefit of the industry, especially pension scheme members,? said Mark Hyde- Harrison, chairman of the NAPF Assessing Consultants' Performance Working Group, in a statement.

Bain names first head of IR, Europe
Boston-based Bain Capital appointed Cécile Belaman as the firm's first head of investor relations for Europe, to be based in the London office. Belaman joins from the London office of Morgan Stanley Alternative Investment Management, the firm's fund of funds arm where she worked for five of her nine years with Morgan Stanley. She will start on June 1 and help manage the firm's European funds and local investor base. Belaman will be responsible for fund raising as well, serving Bain Capital's alternative investment programs including Private Equity, Venture, Brookside, Sankaty and Absolute Return Capital. Bain Capital is currently raising an estimated $20 billion between its tenth buyout fund targeting $16 billion, its third European fund, which is targeting roughly $4 billion and an Asia fund targeting approximately $1 billion.