NEW YORK (Bloomberg) — Bruce Wasserstein, chairman and chief executive officer of Bermuda-incorporated Lazard Ltd., is stable after being hospitalised with an irregular heartbeat, the company said.

"His condition is serious, but he is stable and recovering," Lazard said in a statement from New York yesterday. Richard Creswell, a spokesman for the firm in London, declined to comment further yesterday.

Wasserstein, 61, is personally leading the team advising Kraft Foods Inc. CEO Irene Rosenfeld on her $16 billion takeover bid for British chocolate maker Cadbury Plc. Among Wasserstein's top lieutenants are president Charles Ward, 57; vice-chairman Steven Golub; Kenneth Jacobs, head of Lazard North America; deputy chairmen Jeffrey Rosen, 57, and Gary Parr, 52.

"If he has got a good management team in place that is independent of him, then there isn't much of an issue," said Jason Kennedy, of London-based headhunting firm Kennedy Associates. "If all decisions go through him and management follows what he says, then it's going to be a difficult period" for the firm.

Wasserstein, a former corporate lawyer with a 30-year career on Wall Street, rose to the top ranks of merger advisers during the 1980s, helping run investment banking at First Boston Corp., now part of Credit Suisse Group AG. In 1988, he left with Joseph Perella to found Wasserstein, Perella & Co., an advisory firm that he sold to Germany's Dresdner Bank AG for $1.56 billion in January 2001.

While running his old firm from 1988 to 2000, Wasserstein advised on transactions such as Philip Morris Cos.' $13 billion bid for Kraft Inc. and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.'s $31.4 billion offer for RJR Nabisco Inc.

Michel David-Weill, a descendant of Lazard's founding family, hired Wasserstein in 2001 to revive the company. Wasserstein, who became Lazard's second-largest individual shareholder when he joined the firm, recruited more bankers and, over David-Weill's objections, sold shares to the public for the first time in May 2005. Lazard is led by Wasserstein out of the firm's office in Manhattan.

David-Weill, 76, left the firm he ran for 25 years in 2005 when Wasserstein took Lazard public. Wasserstein's net worth is about $2.2 billion, making him the 147th richest American in 2009, according to Forbes Magazine.

Founded as a dry goods business in New Orleans in 1848, Lazard ranks seventh among financial advisers for announced mergers and acquisitions globally this year, behind larger Wall Street companies Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Citigroup Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co., according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The investment bank in July reported profit that beat analysts' estimates as revenue from advising on corporate restructurings almost tripled. Second-quarter earnings dropped 33 percent to $43.1 million the same period a year earlier.

Lazard is countering a slowdown in mergers and acquisitions with its restructuring advisory business, where the firm said it worked on nine of the top 10 bankruptcies this year. Second- quarter financial restructuring revenue rose to a record $93.2 million.

The shares have gained 41 percent this year in New York trading after losing 27 percent in 2008.

Wasserstein's sister, Wendy, a Pulitzer-prize winning playwright, died in January 2006 at 55 after a battle with lymphoma.