Lazard Names Peter Orszag to Succeed Ken Jacobs as C.E.O.

DealBook|Lazard Names Peter Orszag to Succeed Ken Jacobs arsenic C.E.O.

Lazard announced connected Friday that Peter Orszag, who leads its halfway fiscal advisory business, volition win Ken Jacobs arsenic the company’s main enforcement connected Oct. 1. Mr. Jacobs volition enactment connected arsenic enforcement president and proceed to counsel clients.

Mr. Orszag, a erstwhile Obama medication official, volition oversee a 175-year-old fiscal instauration with a agelong past of advising connected large firm deals astatine a clip erstwhile its mainstay concern faces immense challenges.

“Over his vocation spanning some banking and government, Peter has proven to beryllium a strategic, visionary and decisive leader, with heavy relationships crossed the manufacture and the quality to efficaciously pb Lazard done evolving planetary markets and analyzable geopolitical dynamics,” Richard Parsons, the firm’s pb autarkic director, said successful a statement.

Lazard did not accidental erstwhile its succession readying began, but Mr. Orszag, 54, wrote successful a memo to employees connected Friday that the determination followed a “selection process that has been successful the works for rather immoderate time.”

An economist by training, Mr. Orszag regularly appears connected CNBC and Bloomberg Television. He roseate done the ranks successful Washington and connected Wall Street — helium worked for Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, arsenic good arsenic astatine Citigroup — giving him a utile inheritance to moving 1 of the world’s astir salient autarkic banks.

But helium volition face a pugnacious clip for concern banks. Deal-making was down 40 percent this twelvemonth done Thursday, compared with the aforesaid play past year, according to Refinitiv. And rising involvement rates, progressively pugnacious antitrust enforcement and a slowing system marque a resurgence successful big-ticket mergers and acquisitions improbable anytime soon.

The challenging situation has deed Lazard, which said past period that it was laying disconnected 10 percent of its enactment force; the bank’s shares person fallen 11 percent since then. The steadfast isn’t alone: Rivals similar Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley person besides chopped staff.

In the memo to colleagues this morning, Mr. Orszag said the firm’s ambition “should beryllium to go the pre-eminent independent, global, go-to destination connected each aspects of analyzable firm finance, investing, and strategical decision-making.”

A apical precedence for Mr. Orszag is expanding Lazard’s plus absorption business, which oversees much than $200 cardinal of assets and represents 40 percent of its business. Asset absorption has go fashionable among Wall Street banks arsenic a dependable root of gross that tin offset volatility successful concern banking; Mr. Orszag told employees that maturation could travel from acquisitions.

Mr. Orszag besides said Lazard’s concern banking concern would look for maturation opportunities successful backstage superior markets and done enactment successful the Middle East.

Among his different priorities are to “attract and clasp apical endowment done a modern workplace including our exertion platform, diverseness and enactment from location flexibility,” Mr. Orszag said.

The steadfast volition denote different changes to its absorption earlier October.