Bruce Wasserstein, who died Oct. 14 at 61, was one of the giants of modern investment banking. Beginning in the early 1980s, Wasserstein's dealmaking acumen turned mergers and acquisitions, then a rarity, into a powerful tool of corporate strategy.
He was an unlikely combination: an intellectual Wall Streeter. After graduating from the University of Michigan, Wasserstein enrolled at Harvard Law School at 19 and worked with Ralph Nader's "Raiders" before becoming a corporate lawyer. But it was as a banker--at First Boston, then at the boutique firm he founded, Wasserstein Perella, and finally as CEO of Lazard--that he made his mark....