The Predators' Ball: The Inside Story of Drexel Burnham and the Rise of the Junk Bond Raiders

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About The Predators' Ball: The Inside Story Of Drexel

Product Description “Connie Bruck traces the rise of this empire with vivid metaphors and with a smooth command of high finance’s terminology.” —The New York Times “The Predators’ Ball is dirty dancing downtown.” —New York Newsday From bestselling author Connie Bruck, The Predators’ Ball dramatically captures American business history in the making, uncovering the philosophy of greed that dominated Wall Street in the 1980s. During the 1980s, Michael Milken at Drexel Burnham Lambert was the Billionaire Junk Bond King. He invented such things as “the highly confident letter” (“I’m highly confident that I can raise the money you need to buy company X”) and the “blind pool” (“Here’s a billion dollars: let us help you buy a company”), and he financed the biggest corporate raiders—men like Carl Icahn and Ronald Perelman. And then, on September 7, 1988, things changed... The Securities and Exchange Commission charged Milken and Drexel Burnham Lambert with insider trading and stock fraud. Waiting in the wings was the US District Attorney, who wanted to file criminal and racketeering charges. What motivated Milken in his drive for power and money? Did Drexel Burnham Lambert condone the breaking of laws? About the Author Connie Bruck has been a staff writer of business and politics at  The New Yorker since 1989, where her pieces have won multiple reporting and journalism awards. Her stories have also appeared in  The Washington Post, The New York Times, and  The Atlantic Monthly. She is the author of three books:  Master of the Game, The Predators’ Ball, and  When Hollywood Had a King. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. The Predator’s Ball 1 The Miner’s Headlamp AT 5:30 A.M. each weekday in the early 1970s, a bus pulled up to a stop in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, and a young man lugging a bag that bulged with papers mounted its steps. He was making the two-hour commute to New York City, where he worked at the investment-banking firm of Drexel Firestone. The train would have provided a more comfortable and faster ride; but, for those very reasons, it also offered more opportunity to meet other Wall Street acquaintances. They would want to engage in the kind of idle small talk that commuters share to pass the time. The thought must have been intolerable. He did not wish to be rude, but he wanted no interruption. As soon as he had settled into his seat, being sure to take one with an empty one adjacent, he unloaded a mountain of prospectuses and 10ks (annual Securities and Exchange Commission filings) onto the seat next to him. On winter mornings the sky was still pitch black and the light on the bus was too dim for him to be able to read. He wore a leather aviation cap with the earflaps down; he had been bald for years, and although he wore a toupee his head always felt cold on these frosty mornings. Now over his aviation cap he fitted a miner’s headlamp—strapped around the back of his head, with a huge light projecting from his forehead. Michael Milken was as anomalous at the impeccably white-shoe Wall Street firm of Drexel Firestone to which he traveled each day as were the low-rated bonds that he traded there. He came from a middle-class Jewish family. He had no aspirations to climb any social ladder. He was painfully uncomfortable, moreover, in most purely social situations. He was oblivious to appearance—not caring what kind of car he drove, or what kind of clothes he wore, or whether his aviation cap and miner’s headlamp made other passengers stare at him. Milken was occupied, at every moment, with his own thoughts, and those thoughts were riveted on the bonds. Milken had grown up in the well-to-do, largely Jewish enclave of Encino in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley. His father, Bernard Milken, was an accountant; from the time he was ten Michael watched at his father’s side as he prepared tax returns. A boyhood friend, Harry Horowitz, recalled that the kinetic quality so marked in Milken i