Company: LAZ
Filing Date: 2025-04-30
Form Type: DEFA14A
Source: 0001140361-25-016471
Chunk: 1

Company: Lazard, Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-04-30
Form: DEFA14A
Chunk 1
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 standards, ISS’s peer group methodology “focuses on identifying companies that are reasonably similar to the subject company in terms of industry profile, size, and market capitalization.” The peer group used in the ISS Report, however, added – without explanation – a company with little to no similarities to Lazard. Freedom Holding is a Kazakhstan-basedretail brokerage and investment banking firm listed on an exchange consisting of early-stage issuers with lower market capitalization. Simply omitting Freedom Holding, or using the same peer group used last year or our own peer group from the 2025 Proxy Statement, each results in a “low” concern in ISS’s quantitative analysis. The same negative impact results from the fact that ISS uses an unconventional approach to valuing equity awards, which more than doubled the value of our CEO’s 2023 equity award. As noted in the ISS Report, the grant date fair market value for our CEO’s 2023 grant of Stock Price PRPUs (as defined in the 2025 Proxy Statement), calculated in accordance with SEC rules and U.S. GAAP and as reported in the relevant proxy statement, was approximately $18.8 million (compared to the $40.5 million value you use in your calculations). Using the Company’s determined value produces a “low” concern under your methodology even when using the ISS peer group that inexplicably contains Freedom Holding. For these reasons, we request that ISS conduct a thorough review of the ISS Report and revise its say-on-pay proposal recommendation accordingly. Details Our Pay and Performance Are Well Aligned When Compared with an Appropriate Peer Group ISS’s pivotal objection to our say-on-pay proposal is the degree of alignment between our CEO pay and TSR relative to an ISS-derived peer group over the prior three-year period, which produced a “cautionary low” result in the quantitative screen for Relative Degree of Alignment. This result is driven by two factors, without eitherof which the Company would be a “ low” concern under your methodology, and no qualitative review would be appropriate. ISS significantly changed our peer group in 2024, including the addition of one peer in particular that is objectively wrong Despite no material changes in our size and business mix, you changed one-third of (six of eighteen) your selected peer group (the “Changed ISS Peer Group”) from 2023 to 2024. The Changed ISS Peer Group added four companies to the peer group you used last year (the “Original ISS Peer Group”): 1Blue Owl Capital, Inc.; Freedom Holding