Lazard CEO and Wall Street legend Bruce Wasserstein has died. He was from the old school of big hitters and the driving force behind many of America’s largest takeovers in the 1980s and 1990s. Clusterstock have posted something of an obituary:

Wasserstein graduated from the University of Michigan at age 19, and went on to get law and business degrees from Harvard. He began his career on Wall Street as a lawyer at Cravath, Swaine & Moore. After working on a deal with First Boston’s star M&A adviser Joseph Perella, Wassterstein left the legal practice for investment banking. He joined First Boston for a starting salary of $100,000, twice what he was making at Cravath. He rose to become the co-head of investment banking at the firm. Together they materminded some of Wall Street’s biggest and most exciting M&A deals, including Du Pont’s purchase of Conoco, Capital Cities’ buying ABC, and Philip Morris’s purchase of General Foods.

Click here for further reading.