Daily Archives: September 10, 2005

Take this job and shove it

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Lazard.gifThe Lazard investment banking empire — Paris-based Lazard FrËres & Cie., London-based Lazard Brothers, and New York-based Lazard FrËres & Co. — recently conducted the largest initial public offering by an investment bank since Goldman Sachs went public in 1999. The move was not without critics, particularly among certain sectors of the Lazard workforce. The following is the departing email of one of those critics to his fellow Lazard employees, as noted by the NY Times:

I will be leaving Lazard effective tomorrow after more than 32 years with various firms of the Group around the world. I will be pursuing my career in the general unemployment line, as I am neither old enough nor wealthy enough to retire. I wish myself every good fortune in the future.
I am leaving on the high note of the IPO of Lazard with the knowledge (i) that I will be contributing to the stated intent of reducing the employment costs at Lazard by a total of more than US$ 180 million per year and (ii) that I will not have to comply with the non-disparagement provisions contained in the agreement between Lazard and the “Historical Partners”.
I wish to congratulate the Head of Lazard for his success in selling the Lazard IPO to the investment public and to most (!) of Lazard’s “Working Members”. This will probably be judged in years to come not only as an even bolder act of financial wizardry than the sale of Wasserstein Perella, but also as a gesture of extraordinary altruism, since it was essentially done – from a cash point of view – for the benefit of the Historical Partners.
I wish every success to the Lazard Working Members in their task of working down Lazard’s mountain of debt and hopefully ultimately returning to a situation where the tangible book value attributable to their own (still indirect) interests in Lazard Ltd. will again be positive.
Finally, let me say how gratifying it is, as the only direct descendant of the founding Lazard brothers currently employed in the Group, to sever ties with Lazard around the same time as my distant uncle Michel David-Weill who was the last family member (albeit not a direct descendant of the founding brothers) to run the firm.
Bernard Sainte-Marie

Disassembling Dowd

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wilkinson.jpgWill Wilkinson is a policy analyst at the Cato Institute in Washington and runs the smart Fly Bottle blog. In this TCS Central piece piece (blog link here), Mr. Wilkinson deliciously exposes the muddled thinking behind three recent op-eds written by NY Times columnist Maureen Dowd, Washington Post columnist Harold Myerson and NY Times columnist Paul Krugman that all contend that the principles of limited government and economic libertarianism caused the tragedy in New Orleans.
When I read Ms. Dowd’s piece earlier in the week, it occurred to me that her remark “when you combine limited government with incompetent government, lethal stuff happens” rather naively presumed that less limited but competent government is a realistic alternative. However, Mr. Wilkinson’s op-ed takes that observation several steps further and concludes:

Dowd, Krugman, and Meyerson evidently loathe free markets and limited government. And they also loathe the Bush administration. Apparently it would be nice for them if they could bundle their hatreds into a package of loathing, tie it up in spite, and burn it. So they try. But the package won’t hold together, and they can’t bash Bush without burning themselves. The most cursory inspection of the front page indicates that the difference between him and them is simply the details of their hostility to economic freedom and small government.

Read the entire piece for some refreshing clear thinking.