Lazard is one of the world’s preeminent financial advisory and asset
management firms. We have long specialized in crafting solutions to the complex
financial and strategic challenges of a diverse set of clients around the world,
including corporations, governments, institutions, partnerships and individuals.
Founded in 1848 in New Orleans, we currently operate from 43 cities in key business
and financial centers across 27 countries throughout North America, Europe,
Asia, Australia, the Middle East, and Central and South America.
We focus primarily on two business segments: Financial Advisory and Asset Management.
We believe that the mix of our activities across business segments, geographic
regions, industries and investment strategies helps to diversify and stabilize
our revenue stream.
Our focus in our Financial Advisory business is on:
investing in our intellectual capital through senior professionals who we believe
have strong client relationships and industry expertise;
increasing our contacts with existing clients to further enhance our long-term
relationships and our efforts in developing new client relationships;
developing new client relationships;
expanding the breadth and depth of our industry expertise and selectively adding
or reinforcing practice areas, such as our Capital Structure Advisory, Corporate
Preparedness and Sovereign Advisory groups;
coordinating our industry specialty activities on a global basis and increasing
the integration of our industry experts in Mergers and Acquisitions with our
other professionals;
selectively bolstering our existing presence in certain local markets;
broadening our geographic presence by adding new offices, including, since the
beginning of 2009, offices in Australia (Perth) and the Middle East Region,
as well as integrating our Brazilian operations based in São Paulo and
establishing the Lazard Africa and Lazard Central and Eastern Europe initiatives;
and deploying our intellectual capital, strong client relationships and other
assets to generate new revenue streams, including, for example, revenue that
may be generated by acting as an underwriter in public offerings and other distributions
of securities related to the activities of our Financial Advisory business.
In addition to the investments made as part of this strategy, we believe that
our Financial Advisory business may benefit from external market factors, including:
demand for independent, unbiased financial advice;
debt reduction, recapitalization and related activities that are occurring in
developed and emerging markets;
relatively low interest rates and high corporate cash balances in the current
macroeconomic environment; and favorable levels of cross-border M&A and
large capitalization M&A, two of our areas of historical specialization.
Going forward, our strategic emphasis in our Financial Advisory business is
to leverage the investments we have made to grow our business and drive our
productivity. We continue to seek to opportunistically attract outstanding individuals
to our business. We routinely reassess our strategic position and may in the
future seek opportunities to further enhance our competitive position.
Our strategic plan in our Asset Management business is to focus on delivering
superior investment performance and client service and broadening our product
offerings and distribution in selected areas in order to continue to drive improved
business results. Over the past several years, in an effort to improve our Asset
Management business’ operations and expand our Asset Management business,
we have:
focused on enhancing our investment performance;
improved our investment management platform by adding a number of senior investment
professionals (including portfolio managers and analysts);
continued to strengthen our marketing and consultant relations capabilities,
including by expanding our marketing resources;
expanded our product platform, including through the addition of long/short
equity strategies and an equity team focused on Middle East and North African
markets; and
continued to expand the geographic reach of our Asset Management business, including
through opening offices in Dubai, Singapore and Dublin.
We believe that our Asset Management business has long maintained an outstanding
team of portfolio managers and global research analysts. We intend to maintain
and supplement our intellectual capital to achieve our goals. We routinely reassess
our strategic position and may in the future seek acquisitions or other transactions,
including the opportunistic hiring of new employees, in order to further enhance
our competitive position. We also believe that our specific investment strategies,
global reach, unique brand identity and access to multiple distribution channels
may allow us to expand into new investment products, strategies and geographic
locations. In addition, we may expand our participation in alternative investment
activities through investments in new and successor funds, and through organic
growth, acquisitions or otherwise. We may also continue to expand our geographic
reach.
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