Kraft-Cadbury deal hit by Wasserstein death

The immediate future of the aggressive $6.3bn takeover bid for Cadbury's by the American giant Kraft was in question today following the news from New York that Bruce Wasserstein, one of the best known deal-makers on Wall Street, has died suddenly at the age of 61. He was the key adviser to Kraft and it was while working on the deal that he was admitted to hospital earlier this week with an irregular heartbeat.

It was understood that Wasserstein was stable and recovering when the news came on Wednesday that he had died. The shares of Lazard's, the financial firm of which he was chairman and CEO, were suspended on Wednesday afternoon pending the announcement.

Wasserstein was thought to have been involved in more than 1,000 mergers and acquisitions during his 30-year career. He was famous for his bold tactics and sharp wit and was central to the emergence of investment bankers from the discreet role they once enjoyed to the Masters of the Universe they became in the 1980s.

Among the biggest takeovers he was involved in was the $25bn takeover battle for Nabisco in 1988, subject of the book and film, Barbarians at the Gate. His bullish advice to KKR, the eventual winners, earned him the unwanted nickname 'Bid 'Em Up Bruce'.

"In the deal world, there was Bruce, and there was everyone else," said Raymond McGuire, Citigroup's global investment-banking chief, and one of many senior Wall Street bankers to have learned their trade under Wasserstein. McGuire told the Wall Street Journal: "He had a gift... the intellect of a grandmaster at chess."

For many years, he worked with Joseph Perella and they appeared to be an inseparable duo. Their company, Wasserstein Perella & Co., was known on Wall Street as 'Wasserella'. But the two men eventually went their separate ways, with Perella joining Morgan Stanley in 1993 and Wasserstein eventually joining Lazard Freres.

There then began a long battle to win control of the generations-old company and take it public, much to the horror of the founding family. Wasserstein got his way in the end. Since its first listing in May 2005, Lazard's shares have climbed nearly 80 per cent, matching the performance of Goldman Sachs.

"Bruce was not a social animal. He didn't make small talk," said Perella. "But he was a thinking person. He had a great brain. He was basically smarter than 99 per cent of the people you meet."

Wasserstein's personal fortune was recently put at $2.2bn by Forbes magazines, making him one of the 400 wealthiest Americans. This enabled him to indulge his love of print media, which went back to his days as editor of the college paper at the University of Michigan.

He bought New York magazine among other holdings. Adam Moss, New York's editor-in-chief, said of his proprietor: "He had always been interested in journalism, an interest sharpened by being on the receiving end of it. But he never used it to wield influence the way other powerful men would have, never tried to plant a story, never complained about anything we published."

He is survived by his fourth wife, Angela Chao, an executive at her family's shipping company, and seven children.