Fired Lazard MD Reid Snellenbarger recently bought $7m house
The Wall Street Journal has unearthed the identity of the man Lazard let go after some unspecified inappropriate behavior at a party last weekend. The alleged miscreant was reportedly Reid Snellenbarger, Lazard's Chicago-based co-head of restructuring and capital solutions.
Lazard is making cuts, but it presumably didn't want to cut Snellenbarger, whom it only hired from Houlihan Lokey in April as it expanded its restructuring business. Snellenbarger, in turn, presumably didn't intend to get fired given that he and his wife purchased a $7m home on the shores of Lake Geneva last July.
It's still not clear what the alleged infraction entailed. The WSJ says it took place at a party Snellenbarger hosted over the weekend, possibly even at the Lake Geneva home. Unconfirmed reports on social media suggest interns may have attended.
Snellenbarger, whose first name is David, graduated from Purdue University with a bachelors in finance in 1998 and is 48 years old. Until he joined Lazard two months ago, his entire career had been spent at Houlihan Lokey. Snellenbarger appears to be a well known figure around Chicago: he's on the board of the Illinois Make a Wish Foundation and attended a finance workshop on investment banking insights at Purdue University in 2021.
Lazard may now need to hire itself another head of restructuring. Fortunately, it hedged its bets when it hired Snellenbarger, and recruited Sanjeev Khemlani from FTI Consulting to co-head the business at the same time.
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