What Would Bruce Wasserstein Do? Meanwhile, we scour the web for a version of the Dare to be Great speech.

Portfolio mag’s profile of Bruce Wasserstein explores whether he really got the “last grunt” reveling in the success of Lazard. Anyway, I bring to your attention the funniest part below:

“By now, we should be done with him. Bruce Wasserstein and his fellow corporate raiders—his padded-shouldered brothers in their masters-of-the-universe pinstripes, yellow ties, and red suspenders—should have been shuttled to some secluded private island where they could endlessly swap war stories about hostile takeovers and tender offers, about Federated Department Stores and Texaco and RJR Nabisco, about bidding ‘em up and then taking them apart, about selling off pieces of great American corporations to pay back massive chunks of junk debt … For many years, it seemed Wasserstein could talk his clients into any deal by droning on and on in his steady, gravelly, soothing voice as he delivered his famous ‘Dare to be great’ speech. He could keep talking, colleagues say, until finally—in part to get him to shut up—all parties would agree to the terms of the deal.”

– Is Bruce Wasserstein Finally Right?, Portfolio mag

So do you, pal? The story sparked the idea of finding a copy of a delivered DtbG speech. We spent a bit of time trying to find a version and this is what we came up with:

The speech — or rather the message — comes in varying lengths and versions. It is usually delivered when a client shows signs of being nervous about overpaying for an acquisition. Leaning earnestly across the table towards his client, Wasserstein, begins to talk quietly, yet forcefully. “If you want to be a global player within this industry, you are going to have to pay a price,” he declares — or words to that effect. “You must step up and pay the price — or lose it all to your competitor.”

– Wall Street People, Charles D. Ellis

That’s pretty much the only version that we can find online that has some sense of the actual words (though they seem a bit bland). Here’s a description of the purpose of the speech:

“Wasserstein, at that time the ranking mergers-and-acquisitions wizard of First Boston, gave him his famous ‘dare to be great’ speech, the gist of which was that to be great, you had to be willing to take on huge debts and pay huge fees.”

–NYTimes

Meanwhile, a VC blog has a story on yet another “Dare to be Great” speech, but from Michel David-Weill, not Wasserstein. Shedding light perhaps on the origins of Wasserstein’s DtbG speech?

“By the way, I LOVE the phrase ‘Dare to be great.’ When I worked at elite M&A advisory firm Lazard in the mid-1990s, our Chairman Michel David-Weill used to give a great Dare to be Great speech to the captains of businesses who were on the cusp of tackling transformational deals. It had a powerful effect.”

Now, consulting The Last Tycoons we came up with two references:

“The time had come, Forbes suggested, to call into question the wisdom of Bruce’s standard ‘Dare to Be Great’ speech that had time and again been successful in egging on his clients to pay the higher and higher prices necessary to win deals.”

and

“Bruce was said to deliver the ‘Dare to Be Great’ speech to clients before final bids were due, not unlike how Robert Duvall’s character in Apocalypse Now played Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ before heading off into battle.”

– The Last Tycoons, William D. Cohan

Any ex-corporate raiders want to throw us a bone here? Bruce, if you’re out there, please send a version to us (editor at bankersball . com) and we’ll post, for the edification of bankerkind.