Who

A legendary dealmaker and financier, Wasserstein served as chairman and CEO of the investment bank Lazard until his death in October 2009. He also owned several media properties including New York magazine.

Backstory

Born in Brooklyn on Christmas, precocious Wasserstein attended the University of Michigan and at 19 enrolled at Harvard Law, where he spent his free time volunteering for Ralph Nader's consumer advocacy group. After leaving Cambridge with a joint JD/MBA, Wasserstein took a job at the white shoe firm Cravath. He soon left law behind to join First Boston, quickly ascending the ranks at the investment bank to become co-head of the merger advisory group, along with Joseph Perella, within a decade. In 1988, the duo banded together to launch a boutique firm of their own, Wasserstein Perella, and the legendary partnership was responsible for executing some of the largest M&A deals of the era, including KKR's $30 billion acquisition of RJR Nabisco in 1989 and the deal that brought Time Inc. together with Warner Communications.

In 1993, Perella left the firm after a falling-out, but Wasserstein charged ahead on his own: During the 1990s, he worked on the deal that united Capital Cities with ABC, the 1998 merger of Swiss Bank and UBS, and $10 billion merger of Dean Witter and Morgan Stanley. Wasserstein cashed out in 2000, selling his firm to Dresdner Bank for $1.5 billion. Less than two years later, Michel David-Weill lured him to Lazard as chief executive officer.

Of note

Wasserstein advised on more than a thousand deals worth $250 billion over the course of his career, earning the moniker "Bid 'em up Bruce" along the way for his aggressive tactics in hostile takeover battles. Following the sale of Wassperella in 2000, some imagined Wasserstein would walk away with his fortune and retire, or possibly pursue public service. But the ferociously competitive banker, whose pastime had always been buying and selling companies, had other ideas in mind.

In 2001, he accepted Michel David-Weill's offer to join Lazard, the storied firm that had been struggling following the departure of several key bankers (Felix Rohatyn, Steve Rattner) as well as a dramatic downturn in advisory assignments. Lazard's chairman and patriarch David-Weill hoped the younger Wasserstein could revive the legendary firm; what he didn't count on was that the two would clash almost immediately. Wasserstein's turnaround plan involved dismantling the firm's antiquated structure, hiring a slew of new high-priced bankers, and preparing Lazard for an IPO, a plan that David-Weill was adamantly opposed to. A bruising, three-year battle followed before Wasserstein finally prevailed and Lazard went public. For his part, David-Weill cashed out his stake in the firm and headed off into retirement.

Wasserstein largely succeeded in his mission to make Lazard competitive again. In 2006, it moved into the top ten of global advisory firms, gaining ground on competitors like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Lehman Brothers. And the global financial crisis that has roiled many of Wall Street's biggest banks and resulted in billions in write-downs has had relatively minimal impact on Lazard. (In fact, it reaped millions from the turmoil: It was Lazard's Gary Parr who collected a cool $20 million fee for advising Bear Stearns on its sale to Jamie Dimon's JP Morgan in March 2008.)

But the firm faced new challenges in the fall of 2009 when Wasserstein was hospitalized with a heart ailment and ultimately died several days later. The firm has since named Steven J. Golub, Lazard's vice chairman, as interim CEO.

On the side

Wasserstein maintained a personal investment empire on the side and controlled a handful of media properties up until his death, including the Daily Deal and New York magazine. His purchase of New York—and his subsequent installation of Adam Moss as editor and eternal sidekick Anup Bagaria as CEO—was the culmination of a classic New York media bidding war, where he beat out a consortium of investors that included Daily News owner Mort Zuckerman, columnist Michael Wolff, Donny Deutsch, Harvey Weinstein, Nelson Peltz and Jeffrey Epstein. In recent years, Wasserstein had shed some of the media assets in his portfolio. (In July 2007, for example, he sold off ALM, the owner of the legal mag American Lawyer, for $630 million.) But what will happen to his media assets following his death remains an open question. 

Drama

Wasserstein ruffled feathers on Wall Street in 2006 when he teamed up with corporate raider Carl Icahn to take on Time Warner and its chairman Dick Parsons and push for the break up of the media conglomerate. Most heinous of all, in the eyes of many, was the fact that Time Warner had once been a client of Wasserstein's and he had been involved in putting together the ill-fated merger with AOL in the first place. In the end, Icahn and Wasserstein's bid was thwarted, but Wasserstein's rep was tarnished a tad in the process.

Pet causes

Unlike other Wall Street moguls, Wasserstein wasn't the sort who enjoyed attending galas every night or dealing with bureaucratic boards of museums or big foundations. His most significant philanthropic donation came in 2007 when he announced he was donating $25 million to Harvard Law School to construct a new academic and student center in honor of his late father, Morris Wasserstein. (It's the second largest donation in the school's history.) He also was a reliable donor to Democratic causes and supported Hillary Clinton's presidential bid in 2008.

Personal

The rumpled banker was married four times. He split from his first wife, Laura, in 1974, and later went on to have three children with his second wife, Christine Parrott, including Ben Wasserstein, who worked at his father's New York for a spell; and Pam Wasserstein, an associate at the law firm Wachtell, Lipton. (Herb and Marty are Bruce's longtime corporate lawyers.) That marriage dissolved in 1992, and Bruce eventually went on to marry Claude, with whom he has two young sons Jack and Dash. Bruce and Claude split up in 2008, and in February 2009, he tied the knot with his fourth wife, shipping executive Angela Chao.