Shortly after September 11, 2001, the late investment banker Michel David-Weill finally concluded a deal to bring Bruce Wasserstein to Lazard, then still a private partnership under Michel’s control. The courtship between David-Weill, the patrician fourth-generation scion of the firm’s founding family, which dates to New Orleans in 1848, and the grand investment banker Wasserstein, a Brooklyn ribbon manufacturer’s son who later bought New York magazine, was some 15 years in the making. One former Lazard partner told me that the deal Michel cut with Bruce was one “of desperation.”
A Private Equity Boardroom Coup
William D. Cohan
February 8, 2023
