In 1992, he joined Lazard Frères as managing partner and quickly became one of the firm's star bankers and heir-apparent. As a result of these transactions, Stern shot up the ranks of the richest families in France, occupying the 38th spot, according to Forbes. He sold this second institution for an estimated 1.75 billion francs in 1988 to the Swiss Bank Corporation (SBS, which will later merge with UBS to form UBS S.A.). Immediately after the sale went through, Stern started a new bank, with a similar name and business profile, drawing in many of his former clients. Thanks to a clause attached to the contract, Stern got to keep the copyright over his last name. In 1985, Stern sold the bank for 300 million francs ($60 million in 2005 dollars) to Lebanese investors. During the 1980s, Stern revamped the bank, expanding its activity in financial markets, as well as in mergers and acquisitions. Career Īged 22, Stern took the reins of Banque Stern with a clear mandate to revitalize the nearly bankrupt institution. Keen to follow in his father's footsteps, Stern graduated from the Ecole Supérieure des Sciences Economiques et Commerciales (ESSEC Business School) in Paris with a degree in finance before joining the family's private investment house in 1977.

He is the great grandson of Edgard Stern. His father, Antoine Jean Stern is a descendant of a notable family of bankers, going back to 19th-century Frankfurt, and his mother was Christiane Laroche, former wife of French journalist and politician Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber. 'Life without Edouard is not the same as life with Edouard,' she wrote.Édouard Stern was born in 1954 to one of France's wealthiest families, the owners of the private investment house Banque Stern. In Wednesday's letter, Brossard herself insisted she missed her lover, who had 'a lovely and luminous personality.' Prosecutors and attorneys for Stern's family had alleged instead that Brossard was cynically motivated by greed and the prospect of a $1 million payment he had made to her but later froze. 'Edouard had a beautiful spirit,' she wrote in the letter, read out by a television presenter because she did not wish to appear in person on the program.īecause Brossard she had served more than four years on remand before her trial, she qualified for early release in November 2010. She said she had decided to come forward to talk about 'the real Edouard', whose name had been dragged through the mud during her trial, which exposed lurid details about their four-year relationship and a tale of sex, power and money. Everything just exploded inside me,' she said of the moment she shot Stern, one of France's wealthiest men and a personal friend of former president Nicolas Sarkozy. 'I wasn't in a state where I could think. It was the first time Brossard, who was found guilty in 2009 by a Geneva of Stern's murder, has spoken out publicly about the crime. 'It is obvious that every second of my life that goes by I regret, and will eternally regret my action,' Cecile Brossard, 43, wrote in a letter read aloud during the show dedicated to the murder. The woman who shot a top French banker during a sado-masochistic sex session in 2005 has expressed deep regret for his killing on a Swiss investigative news program.Ĭecile Brossard, who had confessed to shooting Edouard Stern four times in his Geneva penthouse flat on February 28, 2005, was handed an eight-and-a-half year sentence for his manslaughter.īrossard's lawyers argued she snapped under the pressure of a tormented four-year relationship with Stern, whom they portrayed as a 'narcissistic pervert' and deeply manipulative.īrossard left Stern's latex-clad body in the penthouse to be found the next day.

Edouard stern