NEW YORK (Reuters) - Investment bank Lazard Ltd’s fourth-quarter profit beat Wall Street expectations, helped by higher revenue from its asset management division.Lazard, which struggled when dealmaking dried up during the financial crisis, has been building out its asset management unit in an effort to offset its more volatile advisory revenues.Shares in Lazard rose nearly three percent in morning trading.The firm reported a profit of $104.5 million, or 76 cents a share, compared with a year-earlier loss of $54.9 million, or 46 cents a share. The results beat analysts’ estimates of 63 cents a share.Asset management revenue jumped 25 percent from the year-earlier quarter.The unit benefited from higher fee income, chief financial officer Mike Castellano told Reuters, in part because Lazard has emerging market and other funds that attracted new investors in the quarter.The unit attracted net new investments of $3.2 billion in the fourth quarter, contributing to a record $155.3 billion in assets under management. Assets under management rose eight percent from the third quarter.A bumper crop of mergers boosted Lazard’s dealmaking revenue by 53 percent to $260 million. Completed deals in the quarter included SSL International’s sale to Reckitt Beckiser and Abraxis BioScience’s sale to Celgene Corp.Lazard, which ranked 10th in Thomson Reuters’ 2010 rankings of M&A advisors, also has a full slate of deals on which it is still working, including Qwest Communications International Inc’s$22.4 billion merger with CenturyLink Inc.Offsetting the pick-up in dealmaking activity, Lazard said its restructuring business reported less than half its year-earlier quarterly revenue.Across the firm, revenue in the fourth quarter jumped 19 percent to $610.1 million.Shares of Lazard were up 2.7 percent at $43.92 in morning trading. Through Tuesday, the stock was up 8.3 percent this year.