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Bruce Wasserstein obituary

Source: The Guardian

Oct 22, 2009

Summary

Wall Street investment banker nicknamed 'Bid 'em up Bruce'

The banker Bruce Wasserstein, who has died aged 61, cast a long shadow in the financial services industry. With his longtime friend and sometime business colleague Joseph Perella, he demonstrated that the most valuable assets of an investment bank are the people who come up with the ideas and have the talent and tenacity to see them through.

Wasserstein and Perella worked together at the high-octane investment bank First Boston in New York. One morning in 1988, they both quit to set up their own investment banking outfit, Wasserstein Perella. In the following hours and days, a score of other First Boston executives followed them across the street.

First Boston's corporate finance business had been dealt a blow from which the bank would find it hard to recover. The need to address this challenge – of how to hold and motivate the "rainmakers", the key people – gave birth to what is now known pejoratively as the bonus culture.

After less than five years, Perella left to join another investment banking giant,

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