Word: drexel
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...Drexel staffer, sneering at reporters as she walked out the door...
...Like the abrupt fall of the Berlin Wall thousands of miles away, the collapse suddenly confirmed what everyone in the financial world could already feel in the wind: a new era had arrived. After a desperate three-day search for cash in which it was spurned by its bankers, Drexel Burnham Lambert Group filed bankruptcy papers an hour before midnight last Tuesday...
While only the parent company sought protection under Chapter 11, no one expected the investment firm to rise from the ashes. In an industry that operates on trust and good faith, Drexel had exhausted its reserves. The move meant that Drexel, whose financial wizardry reshaped corporate America and ushered in an age of runaway debt and excess, will swiftly liquidate its business. The 152-year-old titan -- with 5,300 employees and $3.6 billion in assets -- will vanish almost overnight in the biggest failure in Wall Street history...
Even in a place and time known for excess, Jeffrey Beck, a "rainmaker" who drummed up merger deals for Wall Street's Drexel Burnham Lambert, stood out as one of the most colorful takeover specialists ever to don a power tie. Nicknamed "Mad Dog" for his courage under fire, he regaled friends with tales of his jungle-patrol days in Viet Nam. He talked of his Silver Star, two Bronze Stars and four Purple Hearts. He often told colleagues that he stood to inherit a multibillion-dollar fortune from the German brewery family of the same name...
Even so, Beck thrived at the Oppenheimer investment firm from 1979 until 1985, when he provoked disbelief by pledging to put up $75 million of his own money to rescue a deal. He was fired and then joined Drexel, where he advised buyout king Henry Kravis in his $25 billion takeover of RJR-Nabisco. When Burrough confronted Beck about his tales, the Wall Streeter denied telling most of them. Now Beck has apparently gone AWOL. Drexel, which received his resignation in the mail three weeks ago, says it has been unable to get in touch with...