Bruce Wasserstein, Chairman and Chief Executive of Lazard, died earlier this week. Just 61, his career spanned worked on some of the largest high-profile deals during the past thirty years.
Wasserstein’s style? “He frightened people,” according to Felix Rohatyn, the former senior Lazard partner is quoted as saying in The New York Times. Known for his hostile takeovers, the Brooklyn-born Wasserstein approached deals not from a relationship building perspective as Lazard had for more than a century; he approached a deal as war.
I left Lazard before Wasserstein was brought into Lazard as a partner and then navigated his way into taking it over in 2005. Yet, even though I never met the man, I felt very sad to hear of his death. Why? His age? It’s close to my own. The fact that he was responsible for raising his sister’s child after the noted playwright Wendy Wasserstein died in 2006? Yes, that touched me to see a young girl lose another parental figure.
Steven Golub is the interim leader of Lazard and may be Wasserstein’s permanent successor. A long-time member of the firm, Golub’s style was not one to frighten people. My experiences as his temporary secretary—and observations of him on the 32nd floor—while Michel David-Weill ran the firm confirm that a new culture is beginning at Lazard. (To read more about the Lazard culture when I was there, read “Temping with Tycoons”.)
I send my condolences that a chapter of the Lazard culture is passing into the history books.
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“One Year On” by Antony Currie, Reuters Breakingviews, October 27, 2010, describes how Lazard has progressed during the past year under the leadership of Ken Jacobs. http://www.breakingviews.com/2010/10/27/lazard.aspx?sg=nytimes