John Wylie has extracted some extraordinary offers on behalf of his clients since establishing Carnegie, Wylie & Co in 2000, but it's a fair bet that he would have been highly motivated to save his very best till last - the sale of his own firm to US investment bank Lazard. Wylie and his co-founder Mark Carnegie announced the sale of their epynomously named business on Wednesday for an undisclosed sum. That sparked a wave of speculation through the market about what price was achieved. The consensus guess was that it could have been between $200 million and $300 million - give or take a $100 million or so - likely to be a mixture of cash and Lazard stock And as usual, Wylie's timing couldn't have been any better. The so called "contagion" from the US sub-prime lending market is sweeping through the markets. The prospect of a slump in deal making took heavy toll of Macquarie Bank and Babcock & Brown on Wednesday, with each falling more than 10 per cent in a single day. Tuesday was a good day to sell. Wylie, whose expertise at extracting high prices from US firms was confirmed during his stewardship of the Victorian energy privatisation in the 1990s, when he headed CSFB's local investment banking operations, will remain in Melbourne but will have carriage over Lazard's Australian advisory operations. That business has only been in existence since 2004, when Lazard coaxed Paul Binsted and Brian Wilson from Citigroup. Binsted and Wilson - who through their connections at Fairfax have landed several deals that have taken them to 13th in the latest Thomson deal rankings - will remain in Sydney and be joined by Wylie's Sydney man, Jeremy Mead. Carnegie will take over as head of Lazard's Australian private equity operations, returning to a role he had with Hellman & Friedman in the 1990s. Mark Burrows and Carnegie, Wylie's Peter Hay will be joint chairmen of Lazard Australia. "Lazard is an international bank with a real difference," Wylie says, noting its focus on advisory work. "Rather than selling financial products to people, it's a global version of what we do. It's a fantastic fit with our business model, culture and ethos." He believes the global network may lead to more deals from his Australian clients looking to expand overseas.