McKean to Join Lazard Freres at L.A. Office

Investment banker Lazard Freres & Co. has tapped one-time California political operative Grover L. McKean to head a new Los Angeles office. McKean, who was a managing director of L. F. Rothschild, abruptly became available when his department was abolished in a Rothschild retrenchment.

McKean, 38, once a top aide to the late California political legend Jesse Unruh, will head an office specializing in municipal finance with the title of senior vice president. He had similar responsibilities for the western states at L. F. Rothschild’s Los Angeles office.

The new office in the mid-Wilshire area marks New York-based Lazard Frere’s first formal presence in California since 1906, when it closed its San Francisco office. Founded in New Orleans, Lazard moved its headquarters to San Francisco 140 years ago and was one of the predecessor firms to the Crocker Bank.

At least one other ex-Rothschild municipal finance executive, Thomas Dunphy, will join the Lazard office, and McKean said that there might be “a few others.” But he asserted that the new office will “do the same volume of business with fewer people.”

McKean was press secretary to former Assembly Speaker Robert Moretti and then became assistant treasurer when Unruh was treasurer. From 1975 to 1981, he supervised the sale of billions of dollars in revenue and general obligation bonds. He then left government work in favor of a job with Shearson Loeb Rhoades.