Felix Rohatyn, a financier and government advisor who has been credited with helping  to keep New York City from financial ruin during the 1970s when he was chairman of the agency that oversaw finances, the Municipal Assistance Corp. He died Dec. 14 in Manhattan. Mr. Rohatyn, a longtime managing director at Lazard Frères & Co., was 91.

The Austrian-born Mr. Rohatyn, whose Jewish family made a narrow escape from Nazi-occupied France in 1940, was known as a deft solver of complicated problems. “I get called when something is broken,” he told the Associated Press in 1978. “I’m supposed to operate, fix it up, and leave as little blood on the floor as possible.”

Early on, the singer Edith Piaf hired him briefly as an English teacher for $5 an hour, until she lost interest in English lessons. His stepfather arranged an introduction to André Meyer, the senior partner at Lazard. “I had no idea what an investment bank did,” Mr. Rohatyn wrote later. He began work in a junior role at $37.50 a week. After military service, he returned to Lazard and stayed for 40 years. He became a partner in 1961, and later was a managing director.