He put together prodigious deals through leveraged buyouts for companies such as International Telephone & Telegraph Company (ITT) who grew to become the ninth largest industrial corporation in the United States. Although he personally was publicity-shy, André Meyer was an advisor to the Kennedy family and a lifelong friend and advisor to Jackie Onassis. He was a friend and advisor to other high-profile public figures such as William S. Paley at CBS and Katharine Graham at The Washington Post''. He was also a close confidant of U.S, President Lyndon Johnson, consulting at the Oval Office several times a year during Johnson's tenure. An avid collector of art objects, Meyer's eclectic assemblages included paintings by Claude Monet, Marc Chagall, and Pablo Picasso, sculptures, Louis XIV furniture, and original music scores. In 1961, he gave artwork to Museum of Modern Art in New York, including a major work by Paul Cézanne. Following his death, the Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired his collection of 19th century European art. His collection of music scores began with works by Georg Muffat and Jean-Philippe Rameau, and expanded to include scores by Georg Frideric Handel, François Couperin, Antonio Vivaldi, Vincent Lübeck, Jean-Baptiste Lully, Christoph Willibald Gluck, a sketchleaf of Ludwig van Beethoven once owned by Frédéric Chopin, Igor Stravinsky, Arnold Schoenberg, Johann Kuhnau, Domenico Scarlatti, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Johann Christian Bach, and Carl Friedrich Abel. When his collection was sold by Sotheby's on 16 and 17 October 2012, they noted that the collection contained beautifully bound 16th and 17th century scores by composers whose manuscripts rarely come up at auction anymore including Orlande de Lassus, Claudio Monteverdi, Jacques Arcadelt, Cristóbal de Morales, Luca Marenzio, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Marco da Gagliano, Girolamo Frescobaldi, Jacopo Peri & Ottavio Rinuccini, and Antonio Cesti, among others. André Meyer maintained a vacation home in Crans-sur-Sierre, Valais, Switzerland and while there in the summer of 1979, he fell ill. He died of circulatory problems in the Nestlé Hospital in Lausanne, and was interred near his closest friend and business partner Pierre David-Weill in the Jewish section of the Cemetery of Montparnasse in the Montparnasse Quarter of Paris, France. Legacy Felix Rohatyn credits Meyer as his mentor. Rohatyn asserts that Meyer's guidance and advice made success at Lazard possible. Notes References 1898 births 1979 deaths American bankers American financial businesspeople American art collectors American money managers American philanthropists French art collectors French