Word: wasserstein
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...Wasserstein and Perella say they left First Boston after a dispute about strategy. The two, who served as co-heads of First Boston's investment-banking operations, failed to persuade their bosses to increase the firm's financial commitment to mergers and acquisitions. The two dissidents believed the statistics were on their side, since the highly profitable investment-banking group produced $850 million of the company's $1.3 billion in revenues last year. The two men wanted First Boston to devote fewer resources to the firm's trading side, since revenues from those money-losing operations plunged 47% last year...
...rift between First Boston's top management and the two stars had been growing for months. Last July, Chief Executive Peter Buchanan, 53, launched a review of the firm's operations. While Wasserstein and Perella hoped that the study would spark a complete rethinking, the report called for "no fundamental change in strategic direction." Wasserstein and Perella chafed against the firm's policies, even though the men were given increased power and responsibilities only three weeks ago. Says Perella: "It was like being put in charge of the dining and engine rooms of a ship, while the guys...
After Perella and Wasserstein finally decided to bail out last week, they met Monday night at the office of their law firm, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, where attorneys helped them draft a charter for their new company. The next morning the two went to First Boston and wrote their resignations. "This is a decision not reached easily," read Perella's handwritten note. Says Wasserstein: "I was flattered to be well paid, but I disagreed with the firm's management on fundamentals." The departing stars made an 11 a.m. appointment with Buchanan in his 43rd-floor Manhattan office, where they cordially...
...Maher and Bott will be hard-pressed to match their predecessors' style or accomplishments. In boardrooms from Pittsburgh to Palm Beach, the two men seemed an unlikely pair. Perella, a lanky 6 ft. 6 in., with an affable demeanor, towers over the rounder, more combative Wasserstein. But since the duo began building First Boston's mergers department in the mid-1970s, they have brought their firm into some of the most famous and infamous deals of the decade. In one case, the team was all too effective in helping Texaco beat rival Pennzoil in a battle to acquire Getty...
Despite their profit-making ability, Wasserstein and Perella were unable to resolve a basic tension between the competing demands of First Boston's investment-banking and trading departments. During the bull-market days of the early 1980s, trading departments grew in size and influence because of their steady profit stream. But since traders are now risking large amounts of capital in increasingly volatile markets, investment bankers argue that the money would be better spent to finance ventures that lately have produced more reliable income. Dealmakers like Wasserstein and Perella are especially eager to become merchant bankers, who use their...