Word: milken
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...expected criminal charges could heavily damage Drexel, the fifth largest U.S. investment firm and the fastest-growing powerhouse on Wall Street. Rudolph Giuliani, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, is likely to follow the SEC in accusing Drexel and Milken of collaborating with convicted arbitrager Ivan Boesky to defraud the firm's clients, trade on insider information and conceal the true ownership of stocks -- all, presumably, in the pursuit of greater profits and power. Milken's lawyers, for their part, accuse the Government of a vindictive campaign based solely on self-serving testimony by Boesky...
...charges have triggered a vigorous debate over Milken's role in 1980s finance. Is he a megalomaniac who has built a tottering tower of corporate debt? Or is he a financial genius whose funding of unsung, mid-size industries greatly overshadows his role as a takeover player? He has many defenders among buyers and users of his junk bonds. Says MCI chairman William McGowan, whom Drexel helped raise $2.4 billion for building long-distance telephone lines: "When we first went to Milken, we were not even qualified for junk bonds, but he was able to help us. People went...
...accountant, Milken grew up in California's San Fernando Valley, only about a dozen or so miles from his current headquarters. In high school, after he was benched as a member of the varsity basketball team, he became head cheerleader instead. Reflecting on those years during a recent interview with TIME, Milken mused, "When things look their worst, you always have the seed of great improvements." At Berkeley during the mid-'60s, Milken concentrated on math and business courses rather than on protest. It was there that he first considered the far-reaching idea upon which he built his empire...
...graduate business student at Pennsylvania's Wharton School, Milken made junk bonds a focus of his scholarship. Despite their reputation for high risk, he found that the securities showed a history of few defaults. Milken believed the securities' relatively high yields, typically 3% to 5% more than an investment-grade corporate bond, were more than enough compensation for that slightly increased risk...
...Milken never put his big idea or his ambition aside. As a trader for the old-line Philadelphia firm of Drexel Firestone in the mid-'70s, he scorned colleagues who hewed to tradition and "spent from 11 o'clock to 2 o'clock at the racquet club." The dogged Milken soon discovered that junk bonds could provide much needed capital for medium-size companies that were unable, because of their size, to issue investment-grade debt. Other firms, notably Lehman Bros., had already tried minting bonds that were high yield from the outset. But Milken was the first to build...