Company: LAZ
Filing Date: 2025-02-24
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001628280-25-007441
Chunk: 5

Company: Lazard, Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-02-24
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 8
Chunk 5
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 financial statements. We believe that our audits provide a reasonable basis for our opinion.

Critical Audit Matter

The critical audit matter communicated below is a matter arising from the current-period audit of the consolidated financial statements that was communicated or required to be communicated to the audit committee and that (1) relates to accounts or disclosures that are material to the consolidated financial statements and (2) involved our especially challenging, subjective, or complex judgments. The communication of critical audit matters does not alter in any way our opinion on the consolidated financial statements, taken as a whole, and we are not, by communicating the critical audit matter below, providing a separate opinion on the critical audit matter or on the accounts or disclosures to which it relates.

Investment banking and other advisory fees—Refer to Note 4 Revenue Recognition to the consolidated financial statements

Critical Audit Matter Description

The Company generally recognizes investment banking and other advisory fees as the benefits of these advisory services are provided to the Company’s clients. These advisory services typically include transaction announcement and transaction completion fees. These fees are not typically recognized until there is an announcement or completion due to the uncertainty associated with those events. However, earlier recognition is appropriate if it is probable that significant reversal of the applicable revenue will not occur.

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We identified the recognition of investment banking and other advisory fees as a critical audit matter because of the judgment required in determining the appropriate period to recognize transaction announcement and transaction completion fees, including obtaining and evaluating appropriate supporting documentation. As such, auditing these transactions required a high degree of auditor judgment when performing audit procedures and evaluating the results of those procedures.

How the Critical Audit Matter Was Addressed in the Audit

Our audit procedures related to investment banking and other advisory fees included the following, among others:

•We tested the effectiveness of controls over the recognition of investment banking and other advisory fees, including those over the timing of revenue recognition.

•We selected a sample of contracts with clients and performed the following:

–Evaluated the terms and conditions of the respective contract to verify the Company appropriately identified its performance obligations and the related fees.

–Evaluated the accuracy of management’s calculation of investment banking and other advisory fees recognized by recalculating the revenue amounts and comparing our expectation to the amount recorded by management.

–Evaluated third party and the Company’s evidence, including, but not limited to, confirmations, court and regulatory approvals, press releases, executed agreements, communications and underlying transaction closing documents, to verify that the revenue recognition criteria were met and revenue was recognized in accordance with U.S. GAAP, including