…compensation costs remained stubbornly high, due in part to management’s decision to pay employees most of their bonuses immediately, rather than deferring big portions of pay to future years as some rivals have done. “We are very comfortable with our approach on deferrals at the firm and we didn’t need to increase it,” Chief Executive Kenneth Jacobs said in an interview. “There’s just no free lunch there.” [Reuters]
Lazard
The Satisfaction Of Punching Each Other In The Face Was Totally Worth $20 Million to JPMorgan And Goldman Sachs
By Matt Levine
When we saw that three boutique banks represented Google and Motorola Mobility in their deal, we were a little puzzled about why. Not that it’s unusual to hire Lazard, Centerview or Qatalyst, but after reading Felix Salmon‘s lament for the breathless pre-market M&A scoop we wondered if that supplied the explanation. Maybe Google and Motorola left out the big banks because they have kind of a deserved reputation for leaking deals, and because keeping news quiet is easier at a smaller shop than at a place with thousands of public-side employees? But on further inspection that theory kind of fell apart, as trading in MMI suggests that the deal may have leaked last week.
The New York Post has what seems to be the correct explanation: Motorola had actually spent a lot of time with full-service bulge bracket investment banks recently, and had come to the considered conclusion that they’re all a bunch of dicks.
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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.”
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]
Bruce Wasserstein Not Stepping Down But Here Are A Few People Who Could Take His Job In The Event Things Take A Turn For The Worst
By Bess Levin
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):
The situation is fluidicy.
More To The Point: Which TV Anchors Have Been Propositioned By, And Turned Down The Advances Of, Jimmy Cayne?
By Bess LevinYou know which saucy CNBC minx we never write about, not even to speculate on her personal life? Michelle Caruso-Cabrera. No offense to MCC, she seems like a good journalist and all, it’s just that Carney’s taste tends to swing more Anglo-Saxon and I prefer to objectify men like Mark Haines, who really have it coming. That ends today. According Radar, Caruso-Cabrera is dating Gary Parr, the deputy chairman of Lazard who Bear Stearns CEO Alan Schwartz called when he realized the whole BSC operation was going to pot. And Car-Cab has been covering the Bear Stearns bailout. And even though Caruso-Cabrera isn’t married and neither is Parr, and there’s probably nothing unethical going on, she does work with Maria Bartiromo, who maybe hung out with former Citigroup CFO Todd Thomson before he got fired for leaving his assistant on a tarmac in Asia to make room for Bartiromo on the Citi jet. Which means she might’ve, somewhere along the way, maybe in hair and make-up, caught something. Plus, you know how girls are– always trying to one up each other by fucking the richest, oldest white guy they can find. CNBC, of course, declined to comment on the matter, though a flack for the network did seem to imply that Charlie Gasparino has been doing the Merrill phantom defecator for the last several months, which would explain his exclusive on the story.
CNBC Reporter Cozies Up to Bear Stearns Savior [Radar]
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