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 formernewspaper 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 LastTycoons 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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