Lazard CEO dies suddenly at 61

Associated Press

Bruce Wasserstein, the CEO of Lazard Ltd. and a prominent Wall Street dealmaker, has died, a company spokeswoman said. He was 61.

Wasserstein was hospitalized with an irregular heartbeat on Sunday. The company said in a statement Wednesday the cause of death had not yet been determined.

Wasserstein had been a Wall Street superstar since the 1980s, working on such landmark deals as Kohlberg Kravis Roberts’ takeover of RJR Nabisco, and the Morgan Stanley-Dean Witter and AOL-Time Warner mergers.

He was the driving force behind Lazard, one of Wall Street’s top mergers and acquisitions advisory firms.

Vice Chairman Steven J. Golub was named interim CEO of Lazard. Golub, 63, has been with the company since 1984.

In the 1980s, Wasserstein and Joseph Perella ran First Boston Corp.’s mergers and acquisitions department before leaving to form their own boutique investment bank, Wasserstein Perella Group Inc. It was at Wasserstein Perella that the pair worked on the RJR Nabisco deal, at the time the biggest corporate takeover in U.S. history, with a price tag of $24.5 billion.

Wasserstein was CEO of Wasserstein Perella between 1988 and 2001 before selling it to Germany’s Dresdner Bank AG for about $1.4 billion.

Wasserstein joined Lazard in 2001 with a mission to make it more competitive against bigger firms like Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley.

Lazard has remained relatively strong throughout the economic downturn.