The week’s top PE-deal involves shoes.

If Merger Monday wasn’t enough, big shoe deals are afoot on Tuesday. And PE firms are in on the action.

Richard Blum, founder and chairman of Blum Capital Partners, has joined the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco’s Economic Advisory Council for a three-year term.

Yesterday we reported that Doug Dossey left his position as managing director at mid-market buyout firm FdG Associates to take a position with Blum Capital. Today I’ve got more details.

Dossey made the move in August after Blum Capital approached him in March, possibly as a result of attention from his work on the firm’s buyout of infrastructure company Joseph B. Fay & Co.

In an interview with peHUB, Dossey said he wasn’t looking to leave the firm he spent 11 years with, but found the prospects of Blum Capital’s buyout segment intriguing. As a partner with Blum Capital, he is charged with “re-energizing” the firm’s private equity business.

Blum Capital Partners, a San Francisco-based buyout firm, peHUB has learned. Dossey was previously a managing director at FdG Associates for 11 years. (Update: I spoke with Dossey and posted more info here.)

Size-wise, the move is a step up-market for Dossey. Blum Capital’s most recent fund is a $3 billion pool. Compare that with FdG Associates’ latest fund, a 2005 vintage with $310 million in commitments. Likewise, Blum Capital, based in San Francisco, has invested in some high profile situations like Al Gore’s Current Media and TPG’s deal for Australian retailer Myer. (The former has seen a successful exit via IPO; the latter has not.)

That’s a different world than that of FdG, which buys lower mid-market family-owned businesses. In February, Dossey lead the firm’s buyout of infrastructure company Joseph B. Fay & Co. The deal was valued at around $100 million.

SYDNEY (Reuters) – Myer, Australia’s largest department store chain, raised A$2.2 billion ($2 billion) in the nation’s biggest IPO in two years, selling shares at the lower end of an indicative range, as institutional investors baulked at the rich valuation. Myer said in a statement on Thursday its private equity owners TPG Capital and Blum [...]