Mini-media mogul and Lazard chief Bruce Wasserstein's impending venture into the public markets appears to be more complicated than, well, any major IPO in recent history. Big asset management/advisory firms aren't exactly renowned for simplicity in corporate structuring, but I shudder to think what would happen if the same techniques were applied to New York Magazine. The hypothetical fine print:

New York Magazine, a Delaware corporation, ("The Company") will be split into three parts. The Strategist will be incorporated in Bermuda, but operate from 444 Madison. The Culture section will be jointly owned by Wasserstein & Co., but two-thirds of the equity will convert to partnership shares in Wasserstein, LLC, pending a buyout of existing minority shareholders at a multiple of one and a half times revenue--a liquidity event that only happens if circulation falls between 438,427 and 438,489 on June 4, 2006. Front of the book and the feature well will be part of a publicly owned entity, that is expected to go public via reverse merger into a NASDAQ shell that was formerly a doughnut company in Maine, preceded by a mezzanine sub debt round with a warrant kicker that activates if Adam Moss, Larry Burstein and Anup Bagaria play rock/scissors/paper seven times and Adam wins five of the seven unless, of course, the paper-paper-paper clause is in effect, in which case, the warrant gets activated if Anup wins with paper three consecutive times. The results are subject to professional arbitration because Larry tends to hesitate at the last minute, and you're not really sure if he's mentally deliberating the relative merits of rock versus scissors, or he's sneakily waiting for some preliminary hand motion from the other two—a telling scissors-like splitting of the fingers by Anup or Adam's hand forming the shadow of what may be a fist. He thinks no one notices, but everyone does. Twenty-two percent of retained earnings in Q2 will be transferred to a discreet Swiss bank account where it will await deployment, should Eliot Spitzer decide that any of this seems the least bit questionable. In addition, the back page crossword puzzle will divested, but Wasserstein, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Wasserstein, LLC, will retain rights in perpetuity for all archived crossword puzzles prior to 1986.

If none of that made any sense whatsoever to you, it's still twice as intelligible as the Lazard filing. (Half of it wasn't legally possible, much less plausible, but you could probably say the same thing about Lazard's new structure.)