Lazard sticks with its own advice

March 30, 2009

With the business models of many of the largest financial firms destroyed by rapid deleveraging, it suddenly looks smart to be a purveyor of independent advice. The biggest, Lazard, finds corporations, governments and other banks desperate for help in repairing their balance sheets. Peter Lee reports.

Links to sections in this article:

Just one product offered: Advice
One banker describes Lazard as “a mile wide and an inch deep, with just one product: advice.”

Counter-cyclical business: M&A
Lazard is known as a leading adviser on big-ticket M&A deals. But companies need advice today for more than just M&A.

Debt advisory and Lazard
Why would any company turn to Lazard for debt advice, when it has never been a debt provider?

Restructuring: Stern tests ahead
It is no longer just a handful of banks and equity owners involved in negotiations.

Tough negotiations
There will be tough negotiations ahead. Lazard will take its seat at quite a few.

LAST MONTH, SIG, a specialist supplier of insulation and other materials to the UK and continental European building and construction industries, announced a £325 million ($469 million) placement of equity to existing and new shareholders to strengthen its balance sheet for the worrying and highly uncertain times ahead.

The Sheffield-headquartered company, which grew rapidly from 2003 to 2007 partly through acquisition, employs 13,300 people operating from 800 sites. It spent 2008 hunkering down as trading deteriorated. It cancelled planned acquisition spending, closed 80 sites, cut 7% of its workforce, and improved management of working capital.

Lazard sticks with its own advice

To unlock this article

Topics

More in this section