Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #217021 in Books
• Published on: 2007-05-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 752 pages

Customer Reviews

Interesting
Not only it gives an insight to investment banking, I found it
also interesting, almost like a ficton. I don't think it is just
gossip. On the contrary it outlines the evolution of investment banking
and draws quite well the figures of the main protagonists.
I don't know if everything is true, but for sure it is an interesting
point of view and it seems to be well documented.

A Wilderness of Mirrors
Based on unique access Mr Cohan has put together a comprehensive picture of one of the last private banks in the Investment Banking world. As objective a view as anybody would ever be able to get of this world where perception and reality can not be distinguished even by those inside the firm. Lazard was lucky enough to have a transatlantic Mergers and Acquisition business that its competitors tried to emulate in the giddy 1990's. A cast of characters which were the last of the "stars", that created so much heat they burned each other to cinders. A fitting obituary to a world that disappeared.

From a different age
With extensive access to all players involved (except one, who declined to be interviewed) William D Cohan does a marvelous job in recounting the history of a bank from another time and the history of investment banking right into the 1990s.
When reading the book I could not escape the feeling that Lazard was almost run like a personal fiefdom of the David-Weills with a few `stars' like Andre Meyer and Felix Rohatyn allowed to drive the business and take their cut along the way without ever questioning the authority of the owner. The bank has done quite well out of this arrangement, but this set-up has made it near impossible to run the bank in a `normal-managed' way. Michel David-Weill's attempts to install a General Manager were always doomed to fail because he would have had to relinquish authority he was unwilling to give up. William D Cohan shows how he drove one after the other `Managing Partner' round the bend if not into the nuthouse. Bruce Wasserstein appears to have got the better of the owners by turning the bank into a `normal' bank. Whether this was a good deed you have to decide for yourself. I thought the bank both gained and lost at the same time.