Word: bonding
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...Junk bonds were a little-known security when Milken opened Drexel's Beverly Hills office in 1978. Seated at an X-shaped trading desk, Milken first peddled junk for small and medium-size companies whose weak credit ratings kept them from issuing bonds that paid lower interest rates. When investors snapped up the junk, Milken expanded the market for his new securities. The tireless promoter argued that the risk of a junk-bond default was scarcely greater than the risk for blue-chip corporate bonds. Since junk securities paid interest rates about six percentage points higher than conventional bonds, Milken...
Lured by the seemingly inexhaustible demand for junk-bond financing, Drexel's Wall Street rivals rushed into the profitable business. The newcomers included such prominent firms as Goldman Sachs, First Boston, Merrill Lynch and Shearson Lehman Hutton. While Drexel's grip on the market gradually slipped, in 1985 it controlled more than half of the new issues. "Drexel is like a god," Michael Boylan, president of the publishing firm Macfadden Holdings, declared in a magazine article that a Drexel executive proudly framed. "They are awesome. You hate to do business against them...
While the huge fine sapped Drexel's strength, the killing stroke was the severe slump in the $200 billion junk-bond market. Several factors -- a rising default rate, a slowing economy and a new federal law requiring S&Ls to dispose of their junk bonds -- conspired to send the prices of such securities plunging to 50% or less of their face value since last fall. Stuck with more than $1 billion in devaluing junk, Drexel's credit rating began sliding, and its banks cut off credit two weeks ago. The parent company, starved for cash, began to siphon money from...
Drexel executives hurriedly moved to sell off the firm's assets, in many cases at fire-sale prices. Drexel attempted to offer whole departments for sale, including Milken's old junk-bond operation in Beverly Hills, but rival firms turned up their noses at anything that might carry legal liabilities or the taint of scandal. The firm's stockholders will get little or nothing, most notably Belgium's Lambert Group, which owned 26% of the firm and may have to take a $92 million write-off. Creditors include Taiyo Mutual Life, a Tokyo firm with a $70 million claim...
...prime reason is the severely depressed state of the junk-bond market, where shell-shocked investors are wary of buying new issues. Of nearly $300 million in bonds that were scheduled to be sold this month, virtually every offering has been canceled or postponed. Without the ability to tap the junk market, would-be raiders will no longer be able to take aim at substantial targets...