Banker, NYC savior Felix Rohatyn
Felix Rohatyn, a former child refugee from Nazi-occupied France who became a pillar of Wall Street and a trusted government adviser who engineered the rescue of a beleaguered New York City from insolvency in the 1970s, has died. He was 91.
His death was confirmed by his son Nicolas Rohatyn.
Rohatyn's journey from war-ravaged Europe to the pinnacle of the illustrious investment house Lazard was a quintessential tale of immigrant success. As one of the world's preeminent financiers, he brokered numerous mergers and acquisitions, leaving his stamp on Avis, Lockheed Martin, Warner Bros., General Electric and other corporations. He counseled innumerable business leaders and politicians.
For nearly two decades, from 1975 to 1993, as chairman of the state-appointed Municipal Assistance Corp., Rohatyn had a say, often the final one, over taxes and spending in the nation's largest city, a degree of influence for an unelected official that rankled some critics.
His efforts to meld private profit with the public good defined him: In the perception of many his name was synonymous with two institutions — the MAC, which was hastily created in 1975 to save the city from insolvency, and Lazard (formerly Lazard Freres), the storied investment firm that started as a dry-goods business in New Orleans in 1848.
What distinguished him in both domains were his deft negotiating skills, his access to power and his understanding of it, his management of public perception (and of the journalists who shape it), and his adeptness not only with numbers but also with words. He had a genius for finding solutions that satisfied both political and economic imperatives.
Indeed, Rohatyn was given the nickname Felix the Fixer (one not always used as a compliment). But he likened his work to that of a surgeon. "I get called when something is broken,"...