The Last Tycoons
The Secret History of Lazard Frères & Co.
Penguin
Paperback
: 03 Apr 2008
£14.99
£11.99
Synopsis
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 Frères, the world’s most elite and legendary investment bank – and the men who reigned over it all.
For over 150 years Lazard Frères 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.
Interview
Interview with William D. Cohan author of The Last Tycoons
What made you want to write the story of Lazard Freres?
When I was there I knew I was part of something special, and I could see these extraordinary characters around me. However I didn't for a moment think that I'd write this book - I'd given up being a journalist and was busy - very busy - being a banker. When I left Wall Street in 2004 I knew I wanted to write a book and it dawned on me that there hadn't been a full book about the company. I knew there was an extraordinary cast of characters and extraordinary events were about to occur when Michel [David-Weill] gave up the running of the firm to Bruce [Wasserstein], so I started writing it and waited for the blow up to happen. I began writing in January 2004; Lazard Freres filed for the IPO [Initial Public Offering] in December 2004 and went public in 2005, so I was writing it more or less as it happened.
You were an investment banker yourself, and worked at Lazard's. How do you think your personal experience influenced the book?
It gave me a sense of the place - it was part of my DNA - I became of age as a banker there and I learned from those people, so I had an intuitive sense of what the place was like and - crucially - access to the people. Because I knew the firm the people couldn't spin me and it was harder for them to influence what I wrote about them.
Do you think there are lessons that the current financial industry - and the people in it - should draw from the story of Lazard's?
There is a direct link between the way people are compensated and therefore the way they behave and the problems we are having now. Lazard did some bad deals, but they haven't had any part in the latest global financial debacle. They have clean hands.
As you were writing the book, did you discover anything that surprised or shocked you?
Because I was at the firm I knew a lot of the contemporary stuff and I wasn't particularly shocked. It was discovering what they did to Frank Altschul that I found shocking [his partners cut him out after he had helped their families escape from Nazi Europe], how close Felix Rohatyn came to a Grand Jury Indictment [after a dubious deal with ITT], how Felix treated women and how Bruce Wasserstein treated his first and second wives. I also found the holier-than-thou tone of William Loomis's memos shocking!
You write about some extraordinary characters. Did your view of them change as your wrote the book? Did you like any of them?
I always thought Michel was very charming - and he continued to be charming throughout the process although I know he has a ruthless side. Felix is a complex personality, and Steve has always been a little aloof and calculating, and that was reinforced by my experience - although he was trying to do the right thing and that was thwarted. I already had impressions of them and the interviews didn't change those impressions.
The people you are writing about may not believe it, but it is certainly to the benefit of the characters to spend time with the person writing the book. It takes some of the rough edges off and you get their points of view and explanations for why they did what they did, and you get to know them as people. Bruce didn't give any interviews - but he allowed his deputies to talk to me so I got his point of view.
What has the reaction of these people been to the book?
Steve Rattner congratulated me on the FT award. Felix tried to stop the book being published in the States, I'm told, and I haven't heard from Michel. I get nasty shots across the bow from Bruce via his spokespeople when anything about Lazard's connected to the book comes into the news.
Do you have a particular reader in mind? What kind of experience do you want your reader to have?
I wrote it for anybody who has worked in an office and got, or gets, a paycheck. I want readers to get the feel for the place that I had. I believed it is a cautionary tale about people who are powerful, ambitious, wealthy, about the way they treated one another and what they felt they had to do to get ahead.
Is there a particular book or author that has had a significant influence on you as a writer?
There were elements of Fitzgerald that I had in mind. 'Greed and Glory on Wall Street' by Ken Auletta, Jim Stewart's 'Den of Thieves', Bryan Burrough's 'Barbarians at the Gate' - this is the genre of writing that I had in mind. And there are the larger sweeping books such as Jean Strouse who wrote a biography of JP Morgan, the House of Rothschild by Niall Ferguson. Not to be too ambitious, but I also tried to emulate the comprehensive narrative sweep found in the books of Robert Caro and David Halberstam. From the start I wanted to show the narrative being driven by the personalities to make the people come to life and show their human qualities - greed, jealousy - in full.
Do you have a favourite classic?
Faulkner is my favourite writer: Absalom Absalom, The Sound and the Fury, and As I Lay Dying.
Product details
Format :
Paperback
ISBN: 9780141036892
Size : 129 x 198mm
Pages : 752
Published : 03 Apr 2008
Publisher : Penguin
Other formats for The Last Tycoons:
» ePub eBook: eBook : £11.99
The Last Tycoons
The Secret History of Lazard Frères & Co.
£14.99
£11.99
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