Parting the curtains at Lazard
giovedì, 26 aprile 2007 3.02
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By Joseph A. Giannone
NEW YORK (Reuters) - For more than a century, investment bank Lazard Freres cultivated an air of intrigue and mystery, of "great men" providing sage advice to the highest realms of power and wealth around the world.

But in his new book, "The Last Tycoons" (Doubleday, $29.95), former Lazard banker William Cohan pulls back the curtain to reveal a den of infighting, back-stabbing and greed no different from the rest of Wall Street. Lazard's great talent, he argues, was its ability to manage the press and polish its own legend.

"The reality was never the myth," Cohan, a former reporter who worked as a Lazard banker for six years, said in an interview. "It wasn't that much different from other firms."

By most measures a small firm with little capital, the company now known as Lazard has cast an outsize shadow since its founding as a New Orleans dry goods merchant in 1848.

It always attracted colorful figures: Andre Meyer and Felix Rohatyn, Frenchmen who pioneered mergers and acquisitions after World War II; Michel David-Weill, so powerful he was known as the "Sun King."

David-Weill ran Lazard for more than 25 years with big Cuban cigars, an obsession with secrecy, and absolute control over bonuses and promotions.

Its partners in Paris, London and New York were also infamous for turf battles so fierce they almost brought the firm to its knees, paving the way for Bruce Wasserstein, the legendary dealmaker, to take control of Lazard and drag it into the modern era.

Cohan, who worked as an associate and vice president over six years, combed through internal and public documents and conducted interviews with more than 100 partners past and present. The book, with its tales of betrayal, sex and other vices, has been the talk of Wall Street since it was published April 3.

Lazard dismissed the book as "a substantially inaccurate account written by a junior banker who left Lazard more than 10 years ago. It was not fact-checked with the firm and has nothing to do with the present state of Lazard or its business."

Lazard executives reached by Reuters declined to comment. A former top partner said the book "focused on the gossipy, rumor side of things," though he conceded Cohan "knows more about Lazard than anybody dead or alive."

"At Lazard they used to say it's not enough for you to succeed: others have to fail," Cohan said of a Darwinian culture in which bankers battled for power and fees.