Free The last tycoons: the secret history of Lazard Frères & Co by William D. Cohan Page A

eighteenth-century art. The sale comprised 60 paintings, 150 drawings, 50 sculptures, and several pastels, and was described as "one of the most important collections of French eighteenth century art in private hands." In the New York Times article about the announcement, no reason was given for the sale. In his memoir about his family, Daniel Wildenstein said David David-Weill sold the collection because he had simply run out of space in his Neuilly home and wanted to start over collecting more modern works. "He had liberated his walls," Wildenstein wrote, "and he started collecting again."
    The truth, Michel David-Weill confirmed, was far less romantic. By 1937, the financial situation of the Lazard houses in Europe had once again become dire, and the David-Weills had lost control of their remaining 20 percent stake in Lazard Brothers to Pearson. The price to buy back 20 percent of the firm turned out to be very close to the $5 million David-Weill received from the Wildensteins. Although no doubt an extraordinary sacrifice at the time, David-Weill's $5 million investment in the London partnership was vital to Michel's 1984 deal to regain control of all three houses and then to merge them in 2000, creating the global Lazard that exists today. The reacquisition of the stake in Lazard Brothers also turned out to be very valuable in its own right.

    AS OF January 1, 1938, Lazard in New York announced it would merge its separate three-year-old securities underwriting affiliate back into the main firm to create a new partnership, to be known thereafter as Lazard Freres & Co. This combination was said to be "a logical development to meet more effectively the existing conditions in the securities business." The firm's offices would be consolidated on the second floor of 120 Broadway, the Equitable Building, and would have three branches in Chicago, Boston, and Philadelphia. There were seven partners, led by Altschul, who was said to have a large mahogany desk "weighted with four telephones" and to enjoy a pipe, the smoke from which "floats past rare prints hanging on the walls." But Pierre David-Weill's concerns about the performance of the New York office under Altschul did not abate. In June 1938, Pierre sailed to New York to discuss the firm's performance with Altschul. "We all agreed the partners' room was top heavy and that something would have to be done to reduce its burden," Pierre wrote about the June meeting. "Notwithstanding that, you and I, and I think Stanley [Russell], felt that the team had to be strengthened. The more we have been thinking about it, the more certain we are that this is essential if we want to succeed in making a success of the new firm." In a November 10 letter of that year, Pierre told Altschul he was coming to New York again on November 26 on the Queen Mary. "The object of my trip is to confront our views on these questions and to take our decisions accordingly," he wrote. "That is, I think, in accord with what Stanley, you and I had in mind when I left in June, and it seems to me that nothing has happened since, either in results or otherwise, which makes it wise to postpone these matters further."

CHAPTER 3
    ORIGINAL SIN
    B y 1938, everything in Europe seemed to be happening against the backdrop of increasing German military aggression. On March 13, 1938, Hitler announced the Anschluss, the annexation of Austria by the German Reich. Then, on November 9, more than two hundred synagogues across Germany and Austria were set aflame and destroyed in a devastation known as Kristallnacht, the first major orchestrated attack on the Jewish populations of those countries. Stores and businesses owned by Jews were ransacked and gutted. Some ninety-one Jews were murdered and another thirty thousand sent to concentration camps, in Dachau and Buchenwald. Hitler and the Nazis were seeking to make their country Judenfrei, and much of their original focus was on getting rid of the approximately fifty thousand