Lazard (LAZ)

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[edit] Intro

One interesting thing about Lazard is that their business is much more cyclical than their larger investment banking peers like Goldman and Merrill. Over 60% of their revenue comes from advisory services which are heavily dependent on the health of the US economy. Their asset management business has only slightly less exposure to us economic cycles. This is due to the fact that more than $96B of their 110B is concentrated in equities and alternative investments. Equities typically move with the economy.

Don't forget to link to US economic cycles

[edit] Business Financials

You should also mention that the firm just went public in 2005. Also I general am not one for including fluff in articles, but it is probably pertinent that they also got a new management change, and aggressively recruited MDs.

Don't forget footnotes. More is better. The idea is that anyone reading this article should be able to read the footnote and easily find the metric that you cited in the article. You should footnote revenue numbers, key percentages, and relevant metrics, facts and figures.

[edit] Trends and Forces

The connection between subprime lending and LAZ need to be fleshed out. One of the interesting connections has to do with the fact that the subprime fallout has scared banks, who are afraid that it is symptametic of a broader deterioration in credit quality. As a result that have tightened their lending standards. The credit market as a whole was much tighter in the second half of 2007 than it has been in previous years. As a result it has become more difficult to fund M&A transactions. On top of this as financial services firms both banks and I-banks have reported subprime losses it has depressed the overall equity markets which can't be good for Lazard's asset management business.

[edit] Competition

Please make the competitors into a bulleted list and include a one sentence description for each. Also choose one metric to compare across Lazard and its competitors. One that comes to mind would be announced or completed M&A transactions.

[edit] Annotation

Don't forget the annotation. you should annotate at least one major price movement that is trend related.

[edit] Inbound links

Please put links back to Lazard from the articles that you have chosen link to in the Lazard article.

In other words, put a link to Lazard on the Merrill article as well as the US economic cycle article and any others that make sense.