Lazard CEO Bruce Wasserstein, one of Wall Street’s most storied icons and prolific dealmakers, died yesterday after being hospitalized over the weekend with an irregular heartbeat. He was 61.
According to a statement by Lazard, the firm he ran for nearly a decade, the exact cause of Wasserstein’s death could not be determined.
“We are shocked and greatly saddened by the passing of Bruce Wasserstein,” the firm’s statement said. “He was a visionary leader, a devoted father to his children and a good friend.”
Lazard Vice Chairman Steven J. Golub was named interim CEO.
Wasserstein’s death could prove to be a setback for Lazard, which had come to rely on his legendary dealmaking ability to keep the firm very much in the mergers-and-acquisitions mix.
Indeed, Wasserstein was personally involved in advising Kraft on its nearly $17 billion bid to buy British candy maker Cadbury, and sources said he was responsible for Kraft going public with its interest in the company over the objections of fellow advisers Citigroup, Deutsche Bank and Centerview Partners.
Known as one of Wall Street’s most ingenious wheeler-dealers, Wasserstein, a Brooklyn native, amassed a personal fortune of about $2.3 billion, according to Forbes magazine, doling out merger advice to deep-pocketed clients like billionaires Carl Icahn and Ron Perelman.
According to William Cohan, a former Lazard banker and author of “The Last Tycoons: The Secret History of Lazard Freres & Co.,” Wasserstein made more money from investment banking than anyone else on Wall Street.
“He was such a tactician,” said Cohan. “While everyone else was fighting the Vietnam War, he was studying English takeover law at Cambridge [University].”
Lazard Deputy Chairman Jeffrey Rosen saw him slightly differently: “He was more than just a tactician, he was a strategist,” he told The Post. “People make the mistake of characterizing him as two-dimensional, but he had a very rich and complex personality.
“If you think about people who’ve had a significant impact on the investment banking business over the last 30 years, this is one of the people who will be remembered as having the greatest impact,” he said.
He also advised on the $15.7 billion merger of Time Inc. and Warner Bros. in 1990.
“There are only a handful of people on Wall Street I really respect — he was one of them,” famed corporate raider Icahn told The Post.
“I don’t think too many things really bothered him. I think he had a great deal of belief in himself.”
Just nine months ago, he took his fourth wife, shipping heiress Angela Chao, 29, whose sister Elaine Chao served as labor secretary for George W. Bush.
He was a regular on New York’s social scene and was a darling of the Hampton scene, where he and former wife, sultry TV producer Claude Wasserstein, were known as a perfect couple for more than a decade. They were married in 1996 and had two boys Jack and Dash, but split last year.
Wasserstein’s fist marriage to Laurie ended in 1974. He and his second wife, Chris, had three children — Ben, Pam and Chris — but divorced in 1992.
He was one of five children of wealthy textile executive Morris Wasserstein. His grandfather was acclaimed Polish playwright Simon Schleifer, and his sister was Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Wendy Wasserstein, who died in 2006. Wasserstein was raising Wendy’s daughter, Lucy Jane Wasserstein.
A graduate of University of Michigan, he earned a law degree and MBA at Harvard. He started his career as lawyer at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, but switched to in vestment banking.