Michael Milken

Michael Milkenis an American financier whose “junk-bond” operations fueled many of the corporate takeovers of the 1980s.

Milken studied business at the University of California, Berkeley, graduating in 1968. In 1969, while studying at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Finance, he began working at the Drexel Firestone banking firm, which soon afterward merged with Burnham & Company to form what became Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc., a major investment banking company. In 1971 Milken became head of Drexel Burnham’s bond-trading department. He saw great potential in the neglected area of “junk bonds”—i.e., non-investment-grade bonds that were typically issued by smaller, newer companies or by established firms whose fortunes had soured. Though junk bonds earned substantially higher rates of return than did investment-grade bonds, they were also regarded as more liable to default and hence were considered too risky by the large institutional investors—savings and loan associations, pension funds, insurance companies, and mutual funds—that provided American corporations with much of their investment capital. Milken’s studies showed that junk bonds had acceptable default rates for their higher yield, and he began persuading a growing number of institutions to buy them.

By 1984 Drexel Burnham was able to raise large amounts of capital by floating new issues of junk bonds, which Milken used to provide financing for a new class of entrepreneurs and “corporate raiders” to expand their businesses or acquire other companies. Milken’s vast and increasingly powerful junk-bond network fostered the “merger mania” of the 1980s, in which his clients, partners, and allies, among others, engaged in a wave of corporate mergers, acquisitions, hostile takeovers, and leveraged buyouts. By the end of the 1980s, the junk-bond market had grown to $150 billion in size, and Drexel Burnham had become one of the leading financial firms in the United States. Milken’s own operations accounted for at least half of the firm’s profits, and his salary jumped from $25,000 in 1970 to $550 million in 1987—the highest annual compensation up to that time.

In 1986, however, one of Drexel’s clients, Ivan Boesky, was convicted of insider trading, and he implicated Milken and Drexel Burnham Lambert in his illegal financial dealings. In 1988 both Milken and Drexel Burnham were charged with securities fraud. Drexel reached a settlement with the government later that year, agreeing to pay $650 million in fines, and Milken left the firm in 1989. Without Milken’s controlling hand, his network of junk-bond issuers and buyers fell apart, and soon afterward the junk-bond market collapsed, which led to Drexel Burnham’s bankruptcy in 1990. Milken pleaded guilty to six counts of securities fraud that same year; he was sentenced to 10 years in prison, ordered to pay fines totaling $600 million, and permanently barred from engaging in the securities business. He began payment toward approximately $1 billion in fines and settlements in 1991. In 1993 his sentence was reduced to time served.

Following his release from prison, Milken joined his brother Lowell in founding the Milken Institute for Job and Capital Formation, an independent economic think tank. After a battle with prostate cancer, Milken established the Association for the Cure of Cancer of the Prostate in 1993 and expanded his work with charitable organizations. In the same year he launched FasterCures, a think tank based in Washington, D.C., which sought to evaluate and improve systems of prevention, research, and treatment for deadly and debilitating diseases. He founded Knowledge Universe, Inc., a consumer and business education company, in 1996. In 1998, without admitting guilt, Milken returned $47 million in earnings after the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged that he had violated the 1990 order barring him from doing business in the securities industry. In 2007 he launched the Melanoma Research Alliance, a public charity. In 2020 Milken received a pardon from U.S. Pres. Donald Trump for his 1990 conviction.