Word: milken
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Many correspondents painted a benign picture of the financial wizard whose acumen, and sometimes shady practices, powered the 1980s takeover wars. While Milken earned more than $1 billion as the guru of the now defunct Wall Street firm Drexel Burnham Lambert, friends argued that accumulating vast wealth was never his main goal. Wrote CBS president Laurence Tisch, who said he has known Milken for almost 20 years: "I have rarely dealt with a more dedicated and faithful professional or one more sensitive to the needs and goals of his clients or more mindful of the needs of society at large...
...five-page personal letter from Steven Ross, chairman and co-chief executive of Time Warner, called Milken "a long-term thinker, not a quick- buck artist." Wrote Ross, who said Milken became a close friend after arranging a 1984 stock offering for the former Warner Communications: "He talks more about illiteracy in math or chronic diseases of the poor or unemployment than about interest rates...
Celebrities praised Milken's work on community projects. "I have never met the equal of Michael Milken," declared Monty Hall, who hosted the former television game show Let's Make a Deal and is an officer of the Variety Clubs International children's charity. Hall said Milken has donated generously to the charity through the Milken Family Foundations (estimated assets: $350 million). Rosey Grier, an ex-football player who works with impoverished children in Los Angeles, noted that Milken has taught math in public schools and helped raise money for minority businesses. Wrote Grier: "I recognized in him a deep...
...array of other prominent citizens praised Milken's charitable contributions and personal interest in medical research, anticrime programs and other causes. Among his advocates: police chief Daryl Gates and Archbishop Roger Mahony of Los Angeles, California superintendent of education William Honig, Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Occidental Petroleum chairman Armand Hammer. But is Milken a Johnny-come-lately to good works? Not so, according to his friend, attorney Richard Riordan. "This isn't like he began doing good because he felt the heat," says Riordan. "He's been doing this for years...
Roughly 10% of the correspondents, however, were furious with Milken for his confessed criminal activities, which included the manipulation of securities prices. John Weigel, a financial consultant in Costa Mesa, Calif., called Milken "merely a financial extortionist on a Capone-esque scale that demands punishment on a similar scale." Concurred Miami attorney J.B. Spence: "It will be incredibly disheartening to the American public if the sentence is a mere slap on the wrist...