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The Secret History of Lazard Fr?res & Co.
Doubleday
April 2007
On Sale: April 3, 2007
752 pages ISBN: 0385514514 EAN: 9780385514514 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
A grand and revelatory portrait of Wall Street’s most
storied investment bank Wall Street investment banks move trillions of dollars a
year, make billions in fees, pay their executives in the
tens of millions of dollars. But even among the most
powerful firms, Lazard Frères & Co. stood apart. Discretion,
secrecy, and subtle strategy were its weapons of choice. For
more than a century, the mystique and reputation of the
"Great Men" who worked there allowed the firm to garner
unimaginable profits, social cachet, and outsized influence
in the halls of power. But in the mid-1980s, their titanic
egos started getting in the way, and the Great Men of Lazard
jeopardized all they had built. William D. Cohan, himself a former high-level Wall Street
banker, takes the reader into the mysterious and secretive
world of Lazard and presents a compelling portrait of Wall
Street through the tumultuous history of this exalted and
fascinating company. Cohan deconstructs the explosive feuds
between Felix Rohatyn and Steve Rattner, superstar
investment bankers and pillars of New York society, and
between the man who controlled Lazard, the inscrutable
French billionaire Michel David-Weill, and his chosen
successor, Bruce Wasserstein. Cohan follows Felix, the consummate adviser, as he reshapes
corporate America in the 1970s and 1980s, saves New York
City from bankruptcy, and positions himself in New York
society and in Washington. Felix’s dreams are dashed after
the arrival of Steve, a formidable and ambitious former
newspaper reporter. By the mid-1990s, as Lazard neared its
150th anniversary, Steve and Felix were feuding openly.
The internal strife caused by their arguments could not be
solved by the imperious Michel, whose manipulative
tendencies served only to exacerbate the trouble within the
firm. Increasingly desperate, Michel took the unprecedented
step of relinquishing operational control of Lazard to one
of the few Great Men still around, Bruce Wasserstein, then
fresh from selling his own M&A boutique, for $1.4 billion.
Bruce’s take: more than $600 million. But it turned out
Great Man Bruce had snookered Great Man Michel when the
Frenchman was at his most vulnerable. The Last Tycoons is a tale of vaulting ambitions, whispered
advice, worldly mistresses, fabulous art collections, and
enormous wealth—a story of high drama in the world of high
finance.
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