Already a subscriber?At the first global gathering of Lazard managing directors last December, after Peter Orszag had taken the helm of the investment banking boutique, the former economist invited a guest speaker to give a pep talk. His choice rankled many in the crowd.
Yet to Orszag and his backers, presenting an ascendant competitor was exactly the kind of jolt Lazard bankers needed after years of middling results.“A thousand bankers can bring me a thousand deals ... there is very little differentiation,” said Dan Schulman, the former PayPal chief executive whom Orszag recently recruited to Lazard’s board of directors and who is an Orszag fan: “It’s the people who can challenge me on how I think about the world who are unique.”Orszag’s task is twofold.
At the same time that Orszag is trying to enforce productivity within the ranks, he is simultaneously urging bankers to become more “collegial”, attempting to promote more teamwork among Lazard bankers who have been lone wolves since the days of Andre Meyer and Felix Rohatyn, decades earlier. There are early signs of success – particularly after Jacobs and Orszag came within a hair’s breadth of selling the firm to Abu Dhabi’s ADQ last year.
David-Weill was ultimately unseated by the M&A grandmaster Bruce Wasserstein, however, who forcefully united warring families and factions across the firm’s three primary offices in New York, London and Paris. In 2010 upon his sudden death, Wasserstein was succeeded by another acclaimed deal-doer, Jacobs.It was Jacobs himself who identified Orszag as a potential successor.Orszag has used his star power to become an indefatigable brand ambassador for Lazard.
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