Lazard Fires Top Restructuring Banker Accused of Inappropriate Behavior
Lazard fired Reid Snellenbarger this week after a 4th of July party gone wrong. He had just joined the firm in April.
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Thank you intern for the WSJ headline.
The WSJ story only gives his name. what actually happened?
Lazard acted so quickly that Im skeptical he was treated fairly. They really got to the bottom of it in ~24 hours? Either he did something completely insane or Lazard decided to shoot first and ask questions later.
inviting gen z interns to a party like this is just asking for trouble. They should be viewed as walking nuclear landlines and treated accordingly.
Caveat that if he like flashed everyone or something, he deserves his fate and then some. That his name is public but not the facts might be really bad or good for him depending on what they are.
MD: publicly commits act worthy of firing, including harassing interns
Lazard: fires him
You: “gEnZ iNtErNs aRe tO bLaME”
it’s one thing to be neutral in a situation and wait for the facts to come out (if they ever do). It’s another thing to be literally brain dead
I was a lawyer before banking. you'd probably suck at that job because you confuse shrieking moral indignation for thinking
According to whom? Litquidity? Good job.
Who said anything about blame? It was objectively dumb to invite junior bankers to that type of party, regardless of whether or not he misbehaved. no interns around = no headlines. Gen Z are more likely to report the slightest legitimate misbehavior. That's part of why they're landmines. There’s nothing wrong with that, per se.
I also think they’re more likely to interpret ambiguous interactions in a negative light. Reality can vary wildly based on the lens you use
this wounds me because i think you’re very smart
Dude let's be real people have gotten ridiculously sensitive so if there's a guy with no history of anything over a 30+ year career all of a sudden fired you question the whole thing a bit. Let's see don't have details but it's not crazy.
https://brokercheck.finra.org/individual/summary/3211803
Why do you think he avoided a termination disclosure? After all, you said he "publicly committed act worthy of firing, including harassing interns" with a laughable degree of certainty.
FINRA requires an explanation for any involuntary termination. So you have to assume his lawyers may have *credibly* threatened to go nuclear in response to anything other than a voluntary resignation (plus a carefully negotiated NDA and generous severance).
my point? It was and remains dumb to jump to hot takes based on the very little we know. I’m pretty ruthless about proven wrongdoers. But the world is complicated and it’s important to reason based on facts. *Especially* when lots of people will like you just for shrieking indignantly. Knowing when you don't know something makes you 10000x smarter than someone that confuses spongebob text for reasoning (like you).
I heard sexually assaulted multiple young women he works with. Grabbing them, grinding on em, and all when his wife was looking the other way. All in a blacked-out drunken stupor, too. Not exactly the look of leadership. He got all he deserved and then some.
In my experience, when it comes to rainmakers or senior leadership bankers like this guy, firms will try to protect first vs. going straight to firing. So for this guy to get canned immediately, my guess is he did something so blatant in front of multiple witnesses that the decision was made that there would be no way to mitigate the fallout. Just my personal opinion.
Someone dm’ed Lit mentioning he was “hammered, grabbing ass and grinding on the analyst.”
My man
This is why I follow the pence rule
this hits the nail on the head, HR's job is to protect the company. sometimes they do bs investigations to get rid of the legal liability that they saw harassment and didn't do anything about it. it creates a huge liability if there is proof this harassment happened and the company didn't take action
Can’t believe this guy paid 7m bucks for the house in the pictures. Anyway gotta feel for his family, also the affected analyst
The analyst just had their career made
Wtf yeah I saw it just now, $7M?????????????
If you look that house up on Zillow it’s an absolute dump for $7M imo
I understand location is expensive but jeez for $7M that house looked terrible. Going to cost a lot to revamp it
it's on lake geneva, I bet they* were going to tear it down & do a new build
*by they, I mean his soon to be ex-wife and her new BF after he gets his cleaned in the divorce
So they paid $7m to then pay an additional what to tear that one down and build a new house?…
It’s “lake Geneva” not the Hamptons
Incident was probably witnessed by multiple employees so beyond salvation and as such, perfect set up for Lazard to showcase their "zero tolerance" approach
Buddy invited a bunch of female interns to his house for a non work sponsored event. L
I am both surprised and not surprised by something like this. I just can't ever imagine a grown ass man with a wife and kids throwing an unofficial party for juniors and interns at his own house but at the same time ive seen enough of these old guy pervs in corporate america to know they are everywhere.
He has to advise on his career restructuring now
Moral bankruptcy
Stupid question but where does your career even go after this?
Surely it's a PR nightmare for any firm to even look at you. Are you blacklisted from the industry forever?
Take the good old Sage Kelly route
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/03/banker-sage-kelly-returns-to-wa…
If my firm got wind that an MD was hosting an event at his personal home address with juniors and interns invited, it’s unimaginable how quick HR would breaking the door down to his office.
Lazard is a very tight-knit group too, I don’t know how on earth this didn’t raise a red flag with both HR and other MD’s.
A fucking pool party too - They were praying on his downfall.
He knew exactly what he was doing inviting young women he worked with to his home for a pool party. He was his own downfall. Habitual cheater and alcoholic. Hope rehab’s been great!
Before we ban Gen Z from all parties or anoint them all as morally pure, maybe we can wait for the facts to come out…
I was there - I can confirm Reid did the following:
Clearly HR and the board was shocked and appalled by these actions
Wow I vehemently condemn his behavior. The economy is clearly not in for a soft landing
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