NEW YORK (Bloomberg) - Lazard Ltd., the investment bank led by Bruce Wasserstein, posted an unexpected first-quarter loss on a decline in takeovers and costs related to previously announced job cuts.

The loss was $53.5 million, or 77 cents a share, compared with net income of $7.8 million, or 14 cents, in the same period a year earlier, the Hamilton, Bermuda-based company said yesterday in a statement. Excluding expenses related to the job cuts, the company reported a loss of 26 cents. The firm was expected to report earnings of 31 cents, based on the average estimate of 10 analysts in a Bloomberg survey.

Lazard's revenue from advising companies on takeovers fell 42 percent as companies worldwide completed 36 percent fewer deals during the first quarter. The firm is one of the last remaining investment banks on Wall Street after larger rivals Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley transformed themselves into bank holding companies last year.

"This obviously continues to be a tumultuous environment which impacts the timing and level of our revenue," Mr. Wasserstein, the firm's chairman and CEO, said in the statement.

Revenue declined 19 percent to $248.4 million. Operating revenue from financial-advisory services dropped to $163.5 million as fees from takeover advice slid 42 percent to $96.5 million. Revenue from advising on restructurings and bankruptcies almost quadrupled to $60.9 million.

Lazard said in February it was reducing staff to 2006 levels of about 2,200 people, or about 10 percent below its peak. The firm announced at the time it would take a pretax charge of approximately $60 million in the first quarter related to the cuts.

Mr. Wasserstein, a former corporate lawyer, rose to the top ranks of merger advisers during the 1980s, helping to run investment banking at First Boston Corp., now part of Credit Suisse Group AG.

In 1988, he left with Joseph Perella to found Wasserstein, Perella & Co., an advisory firm that he sold to Germany's Dresdner Bank AG for $1.56 billion in January 2001.

Michel David-Weill, a descendant of Lazard's founding family, hired Mr. Wasserstein in 2001 to revive the company.