Word: drexel
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...procedures of most insurers, Executive Life had blazed a fast track to spectacular growth, grabbing market share by offering higher payouts on annuities and charging lower fees than most of its competitors. To meet its growing obligations, the insurer plunged headlong into the high-yield bond market controlled by Drexel Burnham's Michael Milken and puffed up its $10.1 billion asset base with $6.4 billion in risky junk bonds. Once the junk-bond market fizzled in 1989, First Executive Corp., Executive Life's holding company, began to sustain huge losses. California insurance officials are now investigating other large insurers...
...make up for lost time. As an insurance entrepreneur he disdained the slow, steady process of writing policies and building reserves through careful investments to cover eventual payouts. Instead he built the company with sizzle and flash, turning in the 1980s to the high- yield junk bonds sold by Drexel Burnham's Michael Milken. Of Executive Life's $10.1 billion in assets, $6.4 billion is junk. Says Henri Bersoux, a spokesman for the American Council of Life Insurance: "No other company of that size or larger has invested so much of its assets in high-yield bonds." As the junk...
After a year of seemingly endless legal trauma for Drexel Burnham Lambert and Michael Milken, each got unexpectedly favorable news last week. Federal Judge Kimba Wood recommended that the former junk-bond king be eligible for parole after serving only 36 to 40 months of the 10-year sentence she imposed on him for securities violations. Wood based her decision on the financial damage done to investors and companies as a result of Milken's confessed misdeeds, which she calculated to be $318,000, less than a day's pay during Milken's highest-flying years and far less than...
Since Milken's former employer declared bankruptcy early last year, creditors and other parties have filed an estimated $20 billion of claims against it. The problem, observed Federal District Judge Milton Pollack, who is overseeing Drexel's reorganization, is that the company's assets are worth only $2.8 billion. To avoid costly litigation that would drain the firm's remaining assets, Pollack last week secured a tentative accord from the key parties to slash their claims 90%, to $2 billion. If the agreement stands, Drexel could soon emerge from Chapter 11 and resume business...
Most Outrageous Bonus Just two months before declaring bankruptcy, the investment firm Drexel Burnham Lambert handed out $260 million in bonuses to its employees. Some reaped as much as $10 million. The total was more than twice what the company could have used at the last minute to avoid defaulting on its debts...