It was 175 years ago that three brothers from France set up their fine clothing and dry goods shop in New Orleans. They were Alexandre, Lazare and Simon Lazard. That surname — with a lustre second only to that of the Rothschilds — gives you a clue where the story is going. After a fire destroyed the front of their store, they rescued the stock and headed to California, just as the gold rush was becoming a frenzy.
Soon they added gold exports to their thriving store, and by 1876 switched “Lazard Frères” to focus on banking, with a head office in Paris and a branch in San Francisco.
Over the generations, Lazards grew to become one of the most influential finance houses in the
