Bruce Wasserstein Has Died

From NYT‘s DealBook:

Bruce Wasserstein, a Wall Street investment banker who helped pioneer the hostile takeover in the 1980’s and turned the mergers and acquisitions business into a high art, died Wednesday.

Mr. Wasserstein, 61, was the chairman and chief executive of Lazard. The cause of death could not be immediately learned, though he had been hospitalized earlier this week for what was described as an irregular heartbeat.

Mr. Wasserstein, who began his career as a lawyer but quickly moved into investment banking, worked on some of the biggest deals of the past three decades, including Kohlberg Kravis Roberts’s takeover of RJR Nabisco.

Most recently, he has led the team advising Kraft in its potential takeover of Cadbury.

One of Mr. Wasserstein’s siblings was the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Wendy Wasserstein, who died in 2006 of lymphoma.

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