NEW YORK (Bloomberg) Bermuda-based Lazard Ltd, the largest independent merger adviser, said first-quarter earnings fell 4.7 percent as revenue from advising on restructurings declined.Profit was $58.5 million, or 43 cents a share, compared with $61.4 million, or 46 cents, in the same period a year earlier, the company said yesterday in a statement. The average estimate of 11 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg was for a profit of 43 cents.As the recovery from the financial crisis continues, companies are relying less on Lazard’s advice on bankruptcies and restructurings, where revenue slid 65 percent to $35.6 million. The firm’s merger-and-acquisition business helped temper that decline, generating $163.8 million in revenue, or 11 percent more than in the first quarter of 2010.“What we’re really focused on at this stage of the cycle is that our M&A and capital-markets advisory businesses are growing,” chief financial officer Matthieu Bucaille said in a phone interview. “The overall default rate is decreasing.”Bucaille became chief financial officer on April 1 after Michael Castellano, who served as Lazard’s CFO since 2001, retired. Bucaille was formerly deputy chief executive officer of Lazard Freres Banque in Paris.Lazard yesterday boosted its quarterly dividend 28 percent to 16 cents a share. Shares of the company fell 21 cents, or 0.5 percent, to $41.11 yesterday in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. They gained 4.1 percent this year through yesterday.Operating revenue was $456.9 million, little changed from the first quarter of last year, according to the statement. Financial advisory revenue fell 15 percent to $228.9 million in the first quarter from $269.1 million in the year-earlier period, led by the decline in restructuring-advisory revenue.“There’s a gradual improvement in the M&A market, but there are still uneven patters,” Bucaille said. “There’s certainly some momentum going on, but there are lots of macro uncertainties and lots of micro uncertainties in the first quarter that have had some impact on M&A decisions. It has been stop and start.”Revenue from Lazard’s asset-management unit increased 22 percent to $224 million in the first quarter from $183.7 million. Assets under management grew to a record $160.5 billion at March 31 from $155.3 billion on December 31, including net inflows of $700 million, according to the statement.Lazard’s compensation and benefits expense decreased to $270 million from $275.5 million. Compensation costs fell to 59 percent of revenue in the first quarter from 60 percent in the first quarter of last year, excluding a one-time charge.Current and former Lazard employees own 30 percent of the firm. Because the stakes owned by employees can be converted into common stock, the company reports earnings as though the stakes were fully exchanged instead of treating them as minority interest.