Horror and admiration. William Cohan admits to having mixed feelings about the larger-than-life, ego-driven protagonists of The Last Tycoons, his no-holds-barred book about the history of Lazard, the investment bank.

But he also sounds slightly wistful about the passing of the epoch of the “great men” – the Lazard partners who were, in their pomp, “the finest and most experienced collection of investment bankers the world had ever known”, according to the book.