Lazard used to be so much fun. There were larger-than-life characters and exciting plotlines. There was the patrician senior partner Michel David-Weill who could make grown investment bankers cry. There were the partners at the three Houses of Lazard in Paris, London and New York who refused to talk to each other.

There was the titanic power struggle by the late Bruce Wasserstein to wrest control of the firm and then force its partners to go public. There were star bankers such as Gerardo Braggiotti who stormed out in a sulk.