Why is Lazard dying
Lazard’s fall from grace is very much highlighted across threads.
How has this happened? At one point Lazard was consistently thought of as the elite EB?
(excluding the London office which is a shitshow on its own)
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Why though
Friedrich Nietzsche was the first person to say this, maybe you should ask him
Lazard isn’t dying at all. They just used to be the dominant EB 20 years ago, while now Centerview and Evercore top them in the league tables. But they’re still consistently top 10 globally
Lazard US >> Lazard Europe. Here in US, being a VP at KPMG doesn’t allow you to lateral to a VP role at any major IB let alone an elite boutique. Look at the background mid level bankers in London. Every joe from mid-market shit shop ends up at Lazard and other elite boutiques with not much public markets experience or large deal experience.
Not the case at EVR/PJT/CVP london
This isn't true
Not entirely true. In any case, an imperfect comparison. Look at the average company size in Europe; markedly smaller than the US. This is obvious, but when you combine this factor and the relative market share of Big 4 across Europe in terms of deal advisory, you get mid-level Big 4 people that have worked in the (almost entirely private) middle-market transition to EBs that often still deal with private UMM-sized companies. Their skillsets are more transferable than you’d imagine.
This is even more so the case in countries such as Spain, which relatively speaking are financially primitive (HY bonds, as a “mainstream” financing solution, emerged in the mid 2010’s here, for reference). Just take a look at PitchBook and see what deals Rothschild, Lazard, and so forth have advised here in the last few years.
It’s over for them, at this point UBS is better
No way
People throwing MS at me clearly don’t understand sarcasm
I'd consider looking at the intern intake: specifically, I'd make note of a certain individual who obtained 9+ spring weeks who has been the subject of this forum various times and seeing the discussion points around them.
God's Diddy
I know it's normally considered a joke amongst here but I was genuinely disappointed to hear some of the rumours from said individual. They built such a large platform to use to good effect and instead it just ended up in a shitshow of crap / abuse of power.
Should have done better smh.
Heard he’s already lining up REPE interviews
Isn’t he a REPE specialist?
What about the other interns?
Obviously there will be a few nepo/DEI hires, but isn't that common across all firms?
Lazard has by far the highest proportion of diversity hires imho
Some of them did not manage a spring / summer from EBs or BBs aside from Laz.
they are acting like a big bank instead of an EB: brand erosion/bank-like boutique instead of a pure EB/they also had historically weak hires, almost the most DEI oriented EB out there which affected everything that is below VP
When will white men grow a pair and start calling a spade a spade. It’s not DEI; it’s blatant favouritism in favor of women, in particular white women. You got women MDs who barely would make VPs in absence of quotas. All this to appease fictitious client in the room who herself is a beneficiary of DEI quotas and when anyone dares to question their competency, conveniently is labeled a misogynist.
Great write up. Reading through studies that compile “the most growth-oriented and successful companies” and correlating this to their “highly effective diversity initiatives”, do you think that having a diverse team actually drives business development and helps win mandates or that it’s all bs and the studies are conducted with selective favoritism toward the multinational corporations that benefit from economies of scale and obviously hire more diverse candidates as a product of sheer size? Also, do you think this will ever fade and corporate America will go back to a purely meritocrat hiring system (obviously with the exception of pure-play nepo hires which is almost impossible to get rid of and inherent in any human-driven hiring system).
The sign on bonus for women and people of color, for new hire associates, is double that of a non-DEI hire. $100k+ vs. $50-$60k if you count relocation stipend
They actually discriminate based on race and gender and pay you differently.
I don’t know why all the white and Indian male associates they hire don’t do a class action lawsuit against them for discrimination
Wait until you learn about all the DEI hires they made in the past. You know, the ones that made Lazard into one of the more important banks in the world...
Most groups prioritize social and ethno ties as opposed to true quality when recruiting. it's a joke
This is 100% true
It is obviously because there are no David-Weills that run the bank anymore
It was Andre Meyer who made Lazard a name to conjure with.
Oi. Besides the fact that for virtually every moment Meyer was at the bank, it was ran by a David-Weill, you did not get the point I was making. It wasn't a commentary on the competence of the David-Weills or had anything to do with how good Meyer or Rohatyn or Wasserstein were. Some member of the David-Weill family ran Lazard for like 90%-plus of the time. Lazard, up until very recently, was basically a glorified family business.
That's the entire point of the comment I made.
Centerview is by far the most DEI firm and frankly the women are not worse than the men (I say as a former employee and am biased anti DEI tbh). I do think they get the best women tho because they pay so much. I don’t think it’s just DEI. I do think most other firms hire women that are clearly less qualified though, potentially including Lazard.
I don’t think it has anything to do w junior ppl. Probably has to do with who is on top because I don’t think firms make or lose money based on which monkey is making slides.
Longstanding story on Wall Street is that Lazard was such an abrasive and awful place to work 10 years ago, that they had an MBA class or two of associates without a single woman (bc the summer associates did not return)
Eventually Lazard had to offer fellowships to women to pay the full cost of their MBA (in exchange for signing a FT offer) as the only way to convince women to consider working there
More handouts to portray equal participation; clearly not equity
Not an intern ignore title
Lazard has been ridiculed at length on this website for a long time, but at the end of the day the firm is not "dying". It has ~200 years of history and will likely still be around 200 years from now. Any bank with such a history will have its ups and downs, but Laz still appears in the league tables top 10 and has a brand that finance professionals will always respect. They're growing aggressively and, to offer a contrarian perspective, I believe the firm is actually well positioned to outperform over the next 10 years. Keep in mind not everything you read on WSO is reflective of real life
Interesting junior intake
Lazard is having it's fall from grace which has lasted now for approximately twenty years since it went public via an IPO.
I've used Lazard as my ibankers for stuff and they are okay. Not brilliant. Just okay. I used them because of the brand value and nothing more, and remember telling the group head this which obviously annoyed him.
Lazard was a fiefdom of a French family that used European mystique, a few senior bankers with personality disorders, and a whole lot of PR driven by culturally inferior New York finance journalists, to keep prestige up during the tough years of the early 00s and is still running on fumes from the time before that. The new CEO has the right idea that geopolitics and geoeconomics matters but is struggling to monetize the strategy. Let's give them time but the concept that they are still the "haute banque d'affaires" is a bit off. It will take a lot more for them to regain their previous reputation.
Not dying but also relatively stagnant. A long time ago they had a unique and differentiated business model in a time where a lot of the large-cap banking was done by the BB banks. But then a bunch of the EBs started to come onto the scene in 2005-2010 and frankly have just executed better on the model.
Share price is pretty flat over last 10 years, advisory revenues are only up ~20% or so over last 10 years, etc. vs. peers like Evercore, PJT, Moelis, etc. that are rapidly growing and making more strategic hires. Evercore has blown by them a long time ago and the others may well do so in the next decade too.
I have no idea what this means to everyone here (all coming from different POVs), but I sat in on an M&A call recently that had Lazard on one side with an EV in the low 9 figures, like low.
They recently closed a deal with c£40m EV
I haven't even thought about Lazard in months.
I bet Lazard hasn’t thought about you at all
OK 👍
They're still top 3 EB (behind CVP and EVR) for general M&A.
Exits, comp, avg. deal size, L5Y revenue growth say the complete opposite but hope you're enjoying laz bro
When I was looking to lateral from GS S&T some HR jerk told me that they weren’t interested in kids with a state school background. It was a bit weird being delivered by a person from directional nowhere state school from FL working in HR. I hope Lazard goes away after that interaction, which was 20+ years ago. MS and Citi were good enough to make me IB offers at the time.
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