Deal King & Law Media Mogul Dies; Bruce Wasserstein Once Worked for Cravath
Bruce Wasserstein, a onetime corporate lawyer at Cravath Swaine & Moore who became a deal king and law media mogul has died a few days after being hospitalized for an irregular heartbeat, reports Bloomberg. He was 61 years old.
“He made more from investment banking than any man on the planet,” says William Cohan, the author of The Last Tycoons: The Secret History of Lazard Freres & Co. Wasserstein became chairman and chief executive officer of Lazard Ltd. in 2005. Earlier this year, he tied for 190th place on the Forbes magazine list of the world’s 400 wealthiest individuals, with an estimated net worth of $2.3 billion.
A graduate of Harvard Law School, to which he donated $25 million in 2007 in the second-largest gift ever made, Wasserstein earned law and master’s in business administration degrees there in the early 1970s, winning honors in both programs, the news agency recounts. After working as an associate at Cravath for about five years in the 1970s, he moved to First Boston in what was to become a series of increasingly powerful and lucrative banking jobs.
Known for his aggressive and innovative work on major corporate mergers and acquisitions over a 30-year period, Wasserstein most recently advised Kraft Foods Inc. on a $16 billion bid for Cadbury PLC.
Wasserstein invented the “Pac-Man defense,” in which a target company buys its would-be purchaser, reports Reuters.
“I like strategy,” he told the New York Times not quite five years ago.. “That happens to be my particular strength and what I do for a living, but it’s also what I enjoy doing.”
Wasserstein used his wealth to buy American Lawyer for $63 million and National Law Publishing Co. for $200 million in 1997, subsequently selling them to the United Kingdom’s Incisive Media for $630 million. He bought New York magazine for $55 million in 2003.
He was the brother of playwright Wendy Wasserstein, who died of lymphoma in 2006 at age 55, and is survived by his fourth wife, Angela Chao, who he married earlier this year.
Additional coverage:
Deal Book (New York Times): “Bruce Wasserstein, Lazard Chief, Dies”
Reuters: “Timeline: Key dates in Wasserstein’s career”
Updated at 7:41 p.m. to link to Deal Book post.
