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Product Description
Review
Riveting … a genuine page-turner (Will Hutton )
Spellbinding (Financial Times )
A definitive account … it lives up to the billing (The Times )
Has sent a jolt through Lazard and the rest of Wall Street (Wall Street Journal )
An epic (The New York Times )
Spellbinding (Financial Times )
A definitive account … it lives up to the billing (The Times )
Has sent a jolt through Lazard and the rest of Wall Street (Wall Street Journal )
An epic (The New York Times )
Product Description
They amassed unimaginable fortunes and would stop at nothing to make a deal, until their titanic egos started to jeopardize everything. This is the astonishing story of Lazard Freres, the world's most elite and legendary investment bank - and the men who reigned over it all. For over 150 years Lazard Freres had stood apart from other Wall Street firms by offering ultra-wealthy clients the wisdom of its 'Great Men': from Felix Rohatyn, the escapee from Nazi-occupied France turned financial genius, to Michel David-Weill, the inscrutable French billionaire 'Sun King'; from Steve Rattner, the boy wonder from Long Island who clashed violently with the old guard, to larger-than-life CEO Bruce Wasserstein, 'Bid-Em-Up Bruce', who broke with the bank's traditions and made himself billions in the process.In "The Last Tycoons", William Cohan, himself a former high-level Wall Street banker, takes us into their mysterious and secretive world, telling a story of ruthless ambition, whispered advice, explosive feuds, glamorous mistresses, decadent excesses and unimaginable wealth.
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First Sentence
Even among the great Wall Street firmsGoldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Merrill LynchLazard Frères & Co. stood apart, explicitly priding itself on being different from, and superior to, its competitors. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Even among the great Wall Street firmsGoldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Merrill LynchLazard Frères & Co. stood apart, explicitly priding itself on being different from, and superior to, its competitors. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
A fascinating tale, well told. You don't need to know any jargon and the author is very good at explaining any complex issues. It really is amazing just how unpleasant most of these people were.
Also many of them seemed to be pretty incompetent.
I think that some people might find it to be perhaps a bit too long and it can be a bit uneven.
There are lots of great anecdotes and unusual characters in the book. It shows that Investment banking has probably always attracted the "morally challenged"
Also many of them seemed to be pretty incompetent.
I think that some people might find it to be perhaps a bit too long and it can be a bit uneven.
There are lots of great anecdotes and unusual characters in the book. It shows that Investment banking has probably always attracted the "morally challenged"
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
If investment banking and the history of big deals fascinate you, getAbstract invites you to sit down with this compelling history of Lazard Frères & Co., from its humble beginnings through its astounding success. The stories of the dominant personalities who used the Lazard mystique to garner unbelievable fees are legendary. As a former journalist and Lazard banker, William D. Cohan has the skill and qualifications to tell this story. While he covers many of Lazard's biggest men and biggest deals, he never bogs down in technical details. The author focuses on the firm's leaders, and shows their personalities, strengths and foibles. These stories cover shocking self-interest and staggering amounts of money. This large book has a cast of hundreds; it is attributed carefully and well-indexed, though it could use a personnel timeline. Cohan keeps you on track by focusing on the men who led Lazard over the 157 years that it was a family firm. Many of the personal revelations are quite sensational and the book is almost always entertaining.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
At the heart of this book is a fascinating story of a fascinating bank staffed with fascinating characters. I can't help feeling though that better editing would have made this much more readable. For example:
- As a Brit, I object to definitions of the Inland Revenue as "the UK version of the IRS", as though everyone reading the book would know what the IRS is but be ignorant to what the Inland Revenue was, and saying the Department of Trade and Industry is "the UK equivalent of the SEC" is just plain wrong.
- I found the constant lengthy gratuitous asides really annoying. For example, in the middle of a description of a power struggle between the head honchos, which is really interesting, we spend 2 full pages talking about cigars, and their importance to the history of Lazard. I DON'T CARE.
- I really don't understand why the ITT tax case and investigation was drawn out for so long. It is really technical and it bored me, and as an accountant I am used to long boring technical stuff.
All that said, once you get over the ITT case, the pace picks up and the story takes over. Worth a read.
- As a Brit, I object to definitions of the Inland Revenue as "the UK version of the IRS", as though everyone reading the book would know what the IRS is but be ignorant to what the Inland Revenue was, and saying the Department of Trade and Industry is "the UK equivalent of the SEC" is just plain wrong.
- I found the constant lengthy gratuitous asides really annoying. For example, in the middle of a description of a power struggle between the head honchos, which is really interesting, we spend 2 full pages talking about cigars, and their importance to the history of Lazard. I DON'T CARE.
- I really don't understand why the ITT tax case and investigation was drawn out for so long. It is really technical and it bored me, and as an accountant I am used to long boring technical stuff.
All that said, once you get over the ITT case, the pace picks up and the story takes over. Worth a read.
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