To say Bruce Wasserstein was "smart" is a big understatement. He was supersmart. He graduated from high school at 16 and got an MBA and JD from Harvard by 23. By the mid 1970s, he was a big-time M&A lawyer at Swaine & Moore and then became an investment banker at First Boston. From there, he revolutionized the M&A business, as he was a dealmaker in some of the decade's marquee deals. He always seemed to be in perpetual motion, structuring one complex deal after another.

Unfortunately, after falling ill recently from a heart condition, he died today. He was 61. This is according to a report in the Wall Street Journal [a paid publication].

Today could have been a day to look out for more economic numbers, yet all that mattered was that the DJIA hit 10,000. To put this into context, the first time that the DJIA hit 10,000 was back all the way in 1999...

That being said, here are today's unofficial closing bell levels:

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The New York Post reports that concerns remain over Apple, Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs health after he appeared thin at recent developers conferences. This is making investors nervous since it's not likely that anyone can do as good a job as Apple CEO. And Apple's board may have a duty to report on Jobs' health if he can't perform his duties.

I became familiar with this legal requirement two years ago when questions were raised to me about the health of Lazard Ltd. (NYSE: LAZ) CEO, Bruce Wasserstein. The basic requirement for a board is unclear. As I wrote: "it appears that there are two conflicting points of view on the topic. On the one hand, the illness of the CEO -- particularly one as highly regarded as Wasserstein -- is material information under Regulation Fair Disclosure (FD) that could cause an investor to sell if it was disclosed. On the other hand, laws such as The Health Insurance Portability Act (HIPAA) protect the privacy of employee medical records."

In 2003, Jobs had a bout with pancreatic cancer. He recently appears to have lost a significant amount of weight according to the Post. In the case of Jobs, he seems to be appearing in public and doing his job, but the prospect that he might soon be out of Apple's developing picture does not bode well for investors. The lack of comment from Apple seems ominous to me. Meanwhile, Apple is expected to report EPS of $1.08 on revenue of $7.36 billion, according to First Call estimates.

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He has no financial interest in the securities mentioned.

Fortune (which shares parent Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) with BloggingStocks) provides at least two examples which raise questions about whether Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs pushed the Apple board into violating the law.

Two revelations in the article -- that Apple's board decided not to disclose Jobs's pancreatic cancer, for which he delayed surgery because he wanted to try a diet cure, and that Jobs set a backdated options date of January 16, 2001 which the board rubber-stamped, giving recipients a profit of either $1.6 million or $3.9 million -- make me wonder whether Jobs convinced Apple's board to break the law.

As I posted in 2006, Lazard, Ltd.'s (NYSE: LAZ) board may have failed to disclose the illness of its CEO, Bruce Wasserstein, when reports surfaced that he was out of the office with a heart ailment. A lawyer I spoke with said that if a CEO is unable to do his or her job due to illness, the board must disclose it. If Jobs's pancreatic cancer surgery kept him away from doing the CEO's job, how did Apple's lawyers defend the failure to disclose? It surely couldn't have been the lack of materiality -- some estimated that if his illness had been disclosed, Apple stock would have lost 20% of its value.

Bruce Wasserstein's New York Magazine published a list of Wall Street titans who have seen their personal net worth decline in the last year. One name was conspicuously absent from that list: Bruce Wasserstein, who would rank second on the list of biggest losers if he not decided to exclude himself from his own publication. This type of omission has a proud history, as I have never seen Steve Forbes's name on his magazine's rich list.

Nevertheless, here are the top three biggest losers when Wasserstein's name is added accompanied by the amount they have lost:

• The Bear Stearns Companies (NYSE: BSC) former CEO James Cayne saw his net worth plummet $467 million
• Lazard Ltd.'s (NYSE: LAZ) CEO Bruce Wasserstein's net worth has fallen fallen $260 million. (This is calculated by multiplying Wasserstein's 11,394,504 shares by Lazard's stock tumble -- from its May 2007 high of $56.90 to January 24, 2008's $34.09); and
• The Goldman Sachs Group's (NYSE: GS) CEO Lloyd Blankfein has suffered a $100 million decline.

It's nice to own the means of production over at New York Magazine -- and that ownership clearly influences what it chooses not to publish.

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He has no financial interest in the securities mentioned.

The fourth quarter was brutal for investment banks. But for Lazard Ltd. (NYSE: LAZ), things weren't so bad. After all, the company focuses on corporate advisory, and as a result didn't get dinged by principal trading and investments in subprime deals.

In Q4, Lazard's earnings spiked 43% to $122.6 million, or $0.104 per share. Revenues were up 26% to $618 million.

The main boost came from advisory fees, such as for M&A transactions and restructurings. This business increased 27% to $313.6 million in revenues. Oh, and restructuring revenues were up 58% to $32.3 million. In light of the wreckage in the market, I suspect that this segment will continue to thrive.

Of course, a key to the success is Bruce Wasserstein, who is Lazard's CEO and uber dealmaker. For his efforts, he got a hefty $96.3 million restricted stock grant as well as a five-year employment agreement.

However, with the credit crunch and economic uncertainty, the M&A market has been fairly soft in January. If this continues, Lazard will certainly feel some pain.

But in today's trading, Lazard's stock was up 4.46% to $37.25.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook. He also operates DealProfiles.com.

At a talk on September 20th at New York's 92nd Street Y, Lazard Ltd. (NYSE: LAZ) CEO Bruce Wasserstein took a swipe at Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX), BloggingStocks' parent, for its moribund stock price. At the same time, Wasserstein patted himself on the back for taking all his chips off the table when the stock levitated above $18 following the publication of a Lazard report on Time Warner.

Lazard, which was hired by corporate raider Carl Icahn in February 2006, authored a 343 page report that argued for a breakup of Time Warner and a big stock buyback. Beyond its $5 million fee, Lazard's reward from Icahn was a bonus based on how far above $18 Time Warner stock went. Lazard's report estimated that Time Warner's breakup value ranged between $23.30 and $26.57. Following the report, Time Warner stock rose -- peaking at $22.73 on January 12, 2007 -- before declining to its current $18.99 -- about 50 cents a share above its price in February 2006.

While he claimed to like Time Warner management -- he called CEO Dick Parsons "a lovely, well-liked guy" and president Jeff Bewkes, "a highly regarded management kind of guy" -- Wasserstein blamed Time Warner's moribund stock price on their decision not to follow the recommendations in his report. Wasserstein thought Time Warner took one of his ideas -- a $20 billion stock buyback (Time Warner bought back $12 billion) -- but ignored his other suggestions -- to do more spin-offs and to run AOL more effectively.

DealBook reports that Lazard Ltd. (NYSE: LAZ) CEO Bruce Wasserstein has purchased more than $5 million worth of Lazard stock -- 140,000 shares between this Tuesday and Thursday himself and 329,500 during the same time through a Wasserstein family trust. Lazard stock was down 37% from its May 2007 all-time high of $55.19 when he may have bought at $34.81

Last month I attended a party at which one of the attendees noted that she had recently seen Wasserstein at a social event. According to her, Wasserstein was stooped and appeared much more frail than his 59 years would suggest. At this party, my brother, William D. Cohan's New York Times best-selling book on Lazard, The Last Tycoons, was prominently displayed.

But his move to buy shares in Lazard -- although a fraction of his holdings -- is obviously trying to send a signal to investors about his view of the firm's prospects. If the current credit crunch persists, it could have trouble doing LBO deals. The question is whether its debt restructuring practice could take up the slack.

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates, a management consulting and venture capital firm. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He has no financial interest in Lazard.

This morning, Lord Browne, former CEO of BP plc (NYSE: BP) resigned from the board of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS). Can Lazard Ltd. (NYSE: LAZ) follow Goldman's standard and boot Steve Heyer?

Lord Browne, who had been a Goldman director since its 1999 IPO, left his BP post after it was revealed he had lied to the High Court while trying to get an injunction to cover up details of his private life. After losing his position at BP, Browne probably followed public company board protocol and submitted his resignation to Goldman.

Meanwhile, as I noted Wednesday, Steve Heyer -- who was tossed from his CEO post at Starwood Hotels & Resorts, Inc. (NYSE: HOT) after its board received allegations that Heyer sexually harassed employees -- remains on Lazard's board.

Why can't Lazard follow Goldman's standard? Only Lazard CEO Bruce Wasserstein knows for sure.

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates, a management consulting and venture capital firm. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He has no financial interest in the companies mentioned in this post.

I suspect Bruce Wasserstein has some skillful handlers. He currently runs the investment bank Lazard Ltd. (NYSE:LAZ) and is no doubt doing tons of deals.

In the meantime, he's got extracurricular activities. One is a $25 million gift to his alma matter, Harvard Law School. It will be used to build the Wasserstein Hall and the architect is Robert A.M. Stern (you can see it on the right).

It will be completed in 2011.

Oh, Wasserstein also has his own investment firm. It's called Wasserstein & Co., LP. This week, the firm hired Credit Suisse Group (NYSE:CS) to look at "strategic alternatives" for ALM, which is a top legal publisher. Some of its properties include The American Lawyer, Corporate Counsel and The National Law Journal. There is also the Law.com portal (which, by the way, is a great resource).

For the venerable investment bank Lazard (NYSE:LAZ), it's been a stellar year – as the stock price has gone from $32 to $45. Then again, it has been a record-breaking year for deals, such as mergers, acquisitions and going-private transactions.

Well, now Lazard's top insiders want to take some money off the table in a 12 million follow-on offering. Even in the rarefied world of Wall Street, this is still a big number: more than $600 million. About $262 million will go back to the firm.

Who are the lucky ones? There is the firm's vice chairman, Steven Golub, who will sell 249,622 shares.

And what about the firm's legendary Chairman, Bruce Wasserstein? Interestingly enough, he is not listed as a seller.

Politically, that's a smart move – and should be an indication to his team that he is a long-term player.

But, hey, he is already a billionaire, right?

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and operates InvestorOffering.com.

Lazard Ltd. (NYSE: LAZ) CEO Bruce Wasserstein got excellent cover from the latest issue of BusinessWeek. I had hoped for more aggressive reporting but I did enjoy the description of Wasserstein's passionate consumption of a coffee and ice cream concoction during the interview.

That short description has catalyzed the media commentary on the article -- which has focused not on Wasserstein's achievements at Lazard but on his physical health or lack thereof. With the help of my sources, I take responsibility for this focus since I wrote a Blogging Stocks post in July that brought into the blogosphere the open secret that Wasserstein disappeared from view in February and reappeared four months later looking 50 pounds lighter and 20 years older.

I think those in the mainstream media who I've spoken with about the Wasserstein health rumors have let him off without asking the hard and uncomfortable questions about his health that should be of concern to investors in Lazard. One of my sources was amazed that the article did not appear to have inquired about Wasserstein's seven week absence from the firm earlier this year. He also viewed as a whitewash the article's contention that Wasserstein had gone to London in 2000 to "build a top-tier investment bank" after Dresdner Bank acquired Wasserstein Perella. My source believes that the real reason Wasserstein went to London was to avoid paying US New York taxes on the $600 million in proceeds he received from the sale of his firm.

Is Lazard Ltd. (NYSE: LAZ) CEO Bruce Wasserstein seriously ill? That's the word I'm hearing from the clubby world of Wall Street.

Wasserstein is arguably the leading investment banker of his generation. A graduate of Harvard's law and business schools, Wasserstein rose to prominence during the 1980s as part of a dynamic duo of M&A bankers at First Boston -- where he earned the moniker "Bid-em-up Bruce" for his aggressive negotiating style. In 1988 Wasserstein co-founded Wasserstein Perella & Co. with his First Boston partner, Joe Perella, which they sold to Germany's Dresdner Bank for $1.37 billion in 2000. He joined Lazard with the title Head of Lazard in 2002. His challenge was to take the 157 year old partnership public -- which he met in May 2005. Since then, Lazard's stock has risen 50%.

According to my source, a few weeks after the tragic death of his beloved sister Wendy, from lymphoma, and just after delivering his infamous report on Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX), Bruce went into hiding for some eight weeks. He has lost 50 pounds and is said to look like a wobbly, 75-year-old. Bruce is 58 and has always been portly. He is apparently now back at work at Lazard and is to give a speech today.