Lazard CEO Bruce Wasserstein dies

Bruce Wasserstein, the chairman and CEO of investment bank and asset manager Lazard Inc., died this afternoon, according to multiple published reports.

Mr. Lazard was 61. The cause of his death was not immediately known.

Wasserstein had been a fixture on Wall Street since the 1980s. He worked on such landmark deals as Kohlberg Kravis Roberts’ takeover of RJR Nabisco, and the Morgan Stanley-Dean Witter and AOL-Time Warner mergers.

In the 1980s, he helped run First Boston Corp. before co-founding an investment bank, Wasserstein Perella Group Inc., with Joseph Perella. Wasserstein was CEO of Wasserstein Perella between 1988 and 2001 before selling it to Germany’s Dresdner Bank AG for about $1.4 billion.

It wasn’t immediately known who would succeed Wasserstein, who was the driving force behind Lazard. The company’s vice chairman is Steven J. Golub, who has been withthe company since the mid-1980s.

Associated Press contributed to this article