Remembering Bruce Wasserstein
The late Lazard CEO understood journalists, and journalism.
Bruce Wasserstein, the investment banker and CEO of Lazard who died Wednesday at 61, is being remembered in the business press as one of the pre-eminent deal makers of this era. As a player and adviser in dozens of transactions, including the iconic RJR-Nabisco deal, he earned the moniker "Bid 'Em Up Bruce." After running his own firm for years, Wasserstein became involved with—and ultimately took control of—the storied investment bank Lazard. Wasserstein occupied a unique place in the financial and money culture. But he was also the rare Wall Street figure who understood journalists.
Writers, editors, authors, and media types often find themselves on the same panels or in the same restaurants as Wall Street titans, but they live in different worlds. There's a huge differential in power, status, quality of suits, and, above all, wealth. Most billionaires and writers share little in common—from their educational backgrounds (MBAs vs. MFAs), to their places of residence (Upper East Side vs. Brooklyn), to their attitudes toward life (earnest, practical get-at-it, Type A's vs. professional ironists). While they may occasionally feign interest, most of the people who make financial news aren't really curious about the schlumps in the media trade.
But there have always been a few investment bankers who want to be regarded as having done something more than made money, and an even smaller number who want to be intellectuals. Many of those have been associated with Lazard. Felix Rohatyn, the former éminence grise at Lazard, has written frequently in the New York Review of Books. Steve Rattner, the former New York Times reporter turned dealmaker and Democratic adviser, cut his teeth at Lazard. Pete Peterson, co-founder of the Blackstone Group, has written a half-dozen books. Real estate magnate Mortimer Zuckerman has spent a chunk of his fortune running the Daily News and U.S. News & World Report.
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Daniel Gross is one of the most widely read financial and economic writers working today. He is a senior editor at Newsweek, where he writes the "Contrary Indicator" column. He writes the twice-weekly "Moneybox" column for Slate, which also appears on Newsweek.com.
Before joining Newsweek in the spring of 2007, Mr. Gross wrote the "Economic View" column in the New York Times, was a contributing writer to New York, and contributed regularly to magazines such as Fortune and Wired. From 1998-2007, Gross served as the editor of STERNBusiness, a semi-annual academic magazine on economics and management published by the New York University Stern School of Business.
A native of East Lansing, Michigan, Mr. Gross graduated from Cornell University in 1989, with degrees in government and history, and holds an A.M. in American history from Harvard University (1991). He worked as a reporter at The New Republic and Bloomberg News, and has contributed hundreds of features, news articles, book reviews and opinion pieces to over 60 magazines and newspapers. Areas of expertise include: economic and tax policy, the links between business and politics, the rise of the investor class, the culture of Wall Street, and business history.
He is the author of four books: "Forbes Greatest Business Stories of All Time" (Wiley, 1996), which was a New York Times Business bestseller and a finalist for the Financial Times "Lex" award, given to the best business history book of 1996. Translations have been published in Spanish, German, Czech, Polish, Portuguese, Bulgarian, Chinese, Turkish, and Japanese; "Bull Run: Wall Street, the Democrats, and the New Politics of Personal Finance" (PublicAffairs, 2000); "The Generations of Corning: The Life and Times of an American Company," co-authored with Davis Dyer, (Oxford University Press, 20010; and "Pop! Why Bubbles Are Great for the Economy," (HarperCollins, May 2007).
Mr. Gross appears frequently in the media. A regular guest on CNBC, MSNBC, and National Public Radio, he has also appeared on CNN, Fox News Channel, The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, Bloomberg Television, C-SPAN, BBC, and Reuters TV, and on more than 50 radio programs and talk shows.
Mr. Gross lives in Westport, Conn., with his wife and two children.
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