Rede Partners founder leaves for Lazard

• Thomas Donovan joined Lazard as a director of alternative investments. Based in Chicago, he previously was a founding partner of fund placement agency Rede Partners, and before that, was with Credit Suisse's placement agency business for nearly eight years, according to his LinkedIn profile.

• Fund administrator Custom House Global Fund Services launched Custom House Gateway, a web portal that connects fund software across the middle and back office. Hosted in the cloud, it provides alternative fund mangers with a single point of access for their fund software. Gateway also offers a portable solution via desktop, laptop or tablet.

• Fund administrator ISIS Fund Services is now offering a private equity real estate platform to provide both property accounting and partnership accounting services. The platform can produce: financial reporting, accounting and bookkeeping for property entities, facilitate the payment of property level expenses, maintain the financial accounting records for the fund, handle capital calls and create and send out investor reporting.

• Private equity IT provider Abacus Group opened an office in Dallas. Abacus provides a private cloud platform and services to integrate front-office applications, back-office reporting systems, as well as managing email and files. Abacus also provides a compliance feature that allows firms to meet the Dodd-Frank electronic message monitoring policy.

• Audit and accounting firm Rothstein Kass promoted five of its team members. Miri Forster was promoted to principal and leads the firm’s national tax controversy practice. Sabrina Ho was promoted to principal and will be a tax leader in the firm’s family office group. Peter Kehrli will be a leader of the firm's venture capital practice and Jay Shepulski an audit principal. Lastly, Kevin Sasz has been promoted to senior director in the firm’s tax practice.

Investec Fund Finance, part of Investec Specialist Bank, appointed Steve Berry to its team. Berry will focus on lending to credit and hedge funds and enhancing the team’s strategy in this area. He will report to Simon Hamilton, global head of the fund finance division. Berry joins Investec from Banca IMI, where he was a director of UK Structured Solutions in the Fixed Income Sales team.