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into Mount Davidson. Soon thereafter, Lazard vastly increased its export of gold to Europe. In March 1884, Lazard exported $500,000 of gold, some in bars, some in double eagle coins. Only Kidder Peabody, a once venerable old-line investment bank, at $1 million, exported more.
    On August 30, 1888, Lazard Freres & Co. joined the New York Stock Exchange, with seven partners. While non-family members started to join Lazard at this time as "partners," ownership of the firm remained within the founding families.
    The three Lazard houses, in New York, Paris, and London, continued to grow and thrive, mostly from successful foreign exchange and trading. The fact that by the turn of the twentieth century there were indigenous houses in the world's three most important financial centers made Lazard absolutely unique. No other fledgling banking partnership had a presence much beyond its country of origin, with the possible exception of the powerful J. P. Morgan & Co., which was developing pockets of influence across continental Europe and in England. Still, Lazard had something that even the omnipotent J. P. Morgan did not have: Lazard was an American firm in the United States, a French firm in France, and a British firm in the U.K. "The intellectual horizon at Lazard was, what do we make of the world," Michel explained at the time of the firm's 150th anniversary. "How do we understand it with the great privilege of being able to try to understand it from several points of view?"
    One of the key ways Lazard maintained this aura of indigenousness was to engage in a form of loose primogeniture, with fathers passing to sons their coveted partnership seats. This occurred at each house. There was also, at least among the French families, a proclivity for arranged marriages and intermarriages. "The great strength of this family," observed the late writer Arnaud Chaffanjon, "is to have married between cousins, in the same clan. The Weill, Lazard, Cahn and Aron have married their first cousins. It's the best way to keep money within the family." This decision kept the growing fortune from getting dispersed. By the time Simon Lazard died, his son Andre and his nephew Michel were "already learning the business of banking in the Paris house." Alexander Weill brought his San Francisco-born, Paris-educated son, David Weill, into the firm, and he became a partner in 1900. In the late 1920s, David Weill would officially change the family name to David-Weill--he became David David-Weill--in an utterly successful effort to establish the family in French aristocracy, not the easiest thing to do at that time for immigrant Jews in socially stratified France. Pierre David-Weill would follow his father and assume the position of senior partner. And in due course, Michel David-Weill took over from Pierre as senior partner.
    In London, the office was muddling along rather ineffectually as a bank or "bill office," regulated by the Bank of England. All of the partners in Paris were partners of the London branch, which accepted deposits, but mostly from other immigrant banking houses, such as the Rothschilds' and the Barings'. By 1905, Lazard Brothers wanted to develop more of a commercial and corporate business rather than simply being a bank to other banks. To that end, a year before his death, Alexander Weill searched for a well-regarded Englishman to bring into the firm, eventually enlisting Robert Kindersley, a highly successful and well-known City stockbroker--the City being London's equivalent of Wall Street--as a full partner in Lazard Brothers with the French. Kindersley joined Lazard Brothers in 1905 and quickly brought it to prominence. He was the first Lazard partner to focus on the business of advising corporations, not only in foreign exchange and commercial loans but also in the little-known world of mergers and acquisitions.
    Kindersley helped to recruit badly needed new blood to the London house. Lazard Brothers' reputation had advanced