"Give it another six months, " says Stephen Dube, director of technology research for investment banker Wasserstein Perella in New York.

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Wasserstein Perella made lots of money in junk bonds in 1991.

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Perella left Wasserstein Perella in 1993 to join Morgan Stanley.

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"We were just a bank, " says Bruce Nolop, who joined Pitney Bowes as chief financial officer in 1999 after law and business degrees and a career at Wasserstein Perella and other investment banks.

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Dresdner is proud of its investment-banking business: arguments over the latter's future led to the scrapping of the deal with Deutsche, and since then it has bought Wasserstein Perella, an American firm, to bring in new expertise.

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Perella and Wasserstein were stars at First Boston before breaking ranks and setting up their own firm in 1988.

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If Perella were to join Lazard, it would mark his reunion with Wasserstein after more than ten years apart.

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