Michel David-Weill, who died in his 820 Fifth Avenue apartment on June 16 after a brief illness, was the longtime patriarch of Lazard, the international investment bank. Or at least he was until 2005, when the wily deal-maker Bruce Wasserstein wrestled the firm away from him, took it public on the New York Stock Exchange, and made himself a multi-billionaire in the process. David-Weill was 89 years old at the time of his death.
Michel—or MDW, as he was known around the firm—was the sole male heir to the private Lazard partnership, which was founded by his great-grandfather Alexander Weill, along with three of his first cousins, the Lazard brothers, in 1848 as a dry-goods store in New Orleans.
