William Cohan’s portrait of Bruce Wasserstein in the latest Vanity Fair sheds a bit of light on the events surrounding the Lazard chairman’s mysterious death last October.
But one thing is clear: Most of the deceased dealmaker’s colleagues thought he was a selfish asshole who took home a giant paycheck without doing much to deserve it. Several Lazard partners even tried to stage a coup to oust Bruce and approached the board about his enormous pay package in 2008, Cohan reports. But the board eventually feared shareholder lawsuits if Bruce left and the stock dropped.
Here’s one Lazard banker’s take:
“The difference between his perception of his value and everybody else’s was a wide chasm. If you want to look at him in the best light, you would say he just had an incredible view of himself. If you want to look at him in the worst light, you would say he didn’t give a damn. He just could take the money. He could convince the board, and he took it.”
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A month after Bruce Wasserstein’s sudden death, Lazard has a new CEO. Kenneth Jacobs, the head of the legendary investment bank’s North American business, has been named to succeed Wasserstein.
Jacobs was the unanimous selection of Lazard’s board.
In addition to Jacob’s appointment, Lazard added another potential CEO candidate, Gary Parr, to its board of directors and named him vice chairman. Ashish Bhutani was also tapped as a vice chair, while Steven Heyer was named to the new post of lead director.
Antonio Weiss was appointed global head of investment banking.
Jacobs Named Lazard CEO [WSJ]
Lazard Names Jacobs as Its New Chief [NYT]
Lazard said in a statement yesterday that Bruce Wasserstein is “stable and recovering” after checking into the hospital with an irregular heartbeat, and gave no indication the CEO would step down from the firm or cut back on his responsibilities, necessitating the need for someone else to take over. But what do you say we come up with some names, just for kicks? Wass will likely make a full recovery, so it’s not as morbid as it seems, and Ken Lewis is mulling putting his plans to retire on ice* so we needn’t waste our time coming up with a successor for him.
Last Tycoons author William Cohan thinks Vice Chairman Steven Golub would be a likely candidate to take over cause he’s “old-time Lazard guy who has a done a very good job of continuity in terms of bridging the old Lazard and the Bruce Lazard.” Charlie Gasparino is working the phones and will have some wild card names for you to place odds on shortly. Hopefully all of this talk will be for naught, however, because Dick Bové cannot say good-bye to another CEO (she’s holding it together for now but could blow at any second):
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We deserve some sort of prize for holding out a full five days to post about the nude pictures of Lindsay Lohan in New York Magazine. New York got some twenty million page views in the first two days, according to Jeff Bercovici. So much traffic that it crashed the website.
New York Magazine was started by writers and other disreputable literary types but soon fell into the hands of Rupert Murdoch thanks to a hostile takeover. When it happened, some were scandalized. Now it looks like a practice run for Murdoch’s takeover of the Wall Street Journal. Murdoch sold the magazine in 1990 to to K-III Communications, a partnership controlled by KKR’s Henry Kravis. The magazine did well for several years but Kravis was not exactly a hands-off owner. He reportedly fired an editor over the magazine’s coverage of his friends and Wall Street associates.
In 2003, New York was sold to Bruce Wasserstein, the Cravath attorney turned investment banker turned private equity baron. Wasserstein installed the best magazine editor alive, Adam Moss, to head the magazine. And that guy got Lindsay Lohan to pose naked for all of us, once again confirming his place at the top of the magazine editor heap. In short, we all have private equity to thank for bringing us this historic triumph.
Even better, there is an important tax lesson to be learned from all this. At least, that’s what we’re told by the folks at MainStreet.com, the money blog version of Parade magazine. How exactly are Lindsay’s assets taxable? We’re not quite sure we want to answer that question this early in the afternoon. But here’s how MainStreet.com gets there:
Unlike Hollywood starlets, most people are not stripping for the public, but there is a good chance that their financial records could undergo a shocking undressing. (Yes, we know it’s stretch, but go with it, dearest readers.) According to Surviving an IRS Tax Audit, nearly 50% of all taxpayers will be audited during their lifetime. While the initial notice in the mail can be cause for concern, an audit from the IRS doesn’t mean the worst as long as people know what to expect and are prepared.
At least they admit it’s a stretch. A-plus for effort, kids.
After the jump we bring private equity and Lindsay Lohan together in a much more intimate way. It’s NSFW, which is internet-speak for “totally awesome.”
Editor’s Note: That picture represents Lindsay on Portfolio, which seemed appropriate since Portfolio’s media writer was expounding on Lindsay. That’s our story and we’re sticking to it.
Lindsay Lohan Nude [New York]
Naked Lindsay a Web Home Run for ‘New York’ [Media Matters, Portfolio.com]
Naked Lohan Makes Us Think of Taxes [MainStreet.com]
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