What about the rubber suit?

Edouard Stern
(Filed: 05/03/2005)

Edouard Stern, who was shot dead on Tuesday aged 50 while wearing a rubber suit in his Geneva apartment, was a financier with a reputation as an abrasive and uncompromising deal-maker.


For some years Stern was heir-apparent to his father-in-law, Michel David-Weill, chairman and controlling shareholder of the investment bank Lazard Freres. A great-grandson of one of the firm's founders, David-Weill had run the tripartite group - which has operations in Paris, London and New York - since 1977; and in 1992 he brought in Stern to be a senior partner in Paris and New York.

Stern also became a significant shareholder in Lazard's holding companies, and a power struggle swiftly ensued between the two men. It was reported that Stern's aggressive manner led to his being ejected from two of the bank's senior committees. He departed angrily in 1997 to run his own investment fund, leaving a vacuum that was filled by the arrival of the Wall Street veteran Bruce Wasserstein as David-Weill's eventual successor.
The French press labelled Stern le gendre incontrôlable (the uncontrollable son-in-law).

The circumstances of his death remain unexplained: Stern led a private and somewhat mysterious life in Geneva, and was said to have told friends recently that he felt threatened. Theories in financial circles include the possible involvement of the Russian mafia.

Edouard Stern ... joined his family's private investment house, Banque Stern, in 1977.

Two years later, he ousted his own father from control of the business, which he sold to a Swiss bank in the late 1980s, though he remained chairman until 1998. After his departure from Lazard, Stern deployed his Geneva-based €600 million investment fund, Investment Real Returns, to become one of the most controversial players in the European corporate scene.

Typical of his style as an active shareholder was his intervention at Rhodia, the troubled French chemicals company, where he was co-opted as a director and promptly called for the group to be broken up to maximise shareholder value. Rhodia's annual general meeting in 2003 rejected his proposal to oust the chairman, and instead ejected Stern himself from the board.

He was also involved in recent ructions with Suez, the industrial conglomerate, and the Vivendi media group. In Britain, his name was connected in 1999 with an attempt to gain control of the troubled textile group Coats Viyella, in combination with Lord Rothschild and the company's former chairman Sir David (now Lord) Alliance. ...

Edouard Stern's only known hobby was a passion for game shooting and collecting guns.


I still want to know about the rubber suit.

The obit is from the ">Telegraph, London. They give you a good sendoff.