One way of reducing the risk is through the illegal use of inside information, and in fact risk arbitrage with regard to leveraged buyouts was associated with some of the famous financial scandals of the 1980s such as those involving Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky.

Milken was indicted on 98 counts of racketeering and securities fraud in 1989 as the result of an insider trading investigation.

Supporters, like George Gilder in his book, Telecosm, note that " Milken was a key source of the organizational changes that have impelled economic growth over the last twenty years.

Most striking was the productivity surge in capital, as Milken … and others took the vast sums trapped in old-line businesses and put them back into the markets.

Milken was born to a Jewish family in Encino, California.

While at Wharton, Milken was influenced by credit studies authored by W. Braddock Hickman, a former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, who noted that a portfolio of non-investment grade bonds offered " risk-adjusted " returns greater than that of an investment grade portfolio.

Milken was one of the few prominent holdovers from the Drexel side of the merger.

It was said, for example, that Milken raised $ 1 billion for MCI Communications, then an upstart provider of long-distance telephone services, in the space of one hour on the telephone.

Milken was largely involved with kick-starting investments in Nevada, which for many years was the fastest-growing state in the U. S. Milken funded the gaming industry, newspapers and homebuilders ; among the companies he financed were MGM Mirage, Mandalay Resorts, Harrah's Entertainment and Park Place.

Despite his influence in the financial world ( at least one source called him the most powerful American financier since J. P. Morgan ), Milken was an intensely private man who shunned publicity.

Dan Stone, a former Drexel executive, wrote in his book April Fools that Milken was under nearly-constant scrutiny from the Securities and Exchange Commission from 1979 onward due to unethical and sometimes illegal behavior in the high-yield department.

On the other hand, several of the sources James B. Stewart used for Den of Thieves told him that Milken often tried to get a higher markup on trades than was permitted at the time.

Harvey A. Silverglate, a prominent defense attorney who represented Milken during the appellate process, disputes that view in his book Three Felonies a Day: “ Milken ’ s biggest problem was that some of his most ingenious but entirely lawful maneuvers were viewed, by those who initially did not understand them, as felonious, precisely because they were novel – and often extremely profitable .”

Milken himself was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer in the same month he was released.

It was in this position that he first gained national prominence by prosecuting numerous high-profile cases, resulting in the convictions of Wall Street figures Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken.

On March 29, 1989, American business magnate Michael Milken was indicted on 98 counts of racketeering and fraud relating to an investigation into an allegation of insider trading and other offenses.

Milken was accused of using a wide-ranging network of contacts to manipulate stock and bond prices.

According to Edward R. Pressman, producer of the film, " Originally, there was no one individual who Gekko was modeled on ", he adds, " But Gekko was partly Milken ".

He told the Milken Institute Global Conference in May 2012 that over the next ten years, he plans on transforming the company into a single company that will provide internet, video and phone service for both home and mobile applications.

* Milken Scholars, a program that provides outstanding high school graduates with a commitment of four years of college financial assistance, counseling, volunteer opportunities and preparation for graduate studies ;

In later years, Milken and Drexel would shy away from certain of the more " notorious " corporate raiders as the firm and the private equity industry attempted to move upscale.

The buyout -- engineered with the help of junk bond king Michael P. Milken -- saddled Revlon with a huge $ 2. 9 billion debt load, which became an albatross around the company's neck for years to come.

Milken originally planned to fight the charges against him, even though he risked spending the rest of his life in prison if convicted.

Upon his release from prison in 1993, Milken founded the Prostate Cancer Foundation for prostate cancer research.

Milken pled guilty to six lesser, non-RICO, securities fraud offenses rather than risk spending the rest of his life in prison, and ended up serving 22 months in prison.

Shortly afterward, Milken resigned from Drexel and formed his own firm, International Capital Access Group.

* Robert Sobel-Dangerous Dreamers: The Financial Innovators from Charles Merrill to Michael Milken ( 1993 ), ( ISBN 0-471-57734-0 ).

* Biography and audio from Service Sacrée at the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music

It is part of the Austin-Round Rock metropolitan area and included with Austin in the Best Cities to live in for 2009 by the Milken Institute The 2010 census population for the county is 422, 679, a 69. 1 % increase from the 2000 figure.

This prestigious national recognition from the Milken Family Foundation comes with a cash prize of $ 25, 000.

" The first award was presented at the 2007 Wirefly X PRIZE Cup at the Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico, it was presented to two students from Milken Community High School.

Each year approximately half of the tenth grade class from the Milken Community High School in Los Angeles, CA, come to Hod Hasharon to study for a semester along with this program.

After dealing with mortgage bonds, Lewis examined junk bonds and described how Michael Milken built junk bonds from nothing to a multi-trillion-dollar market.

Von Hoffman is the author of more than a dozen books, notably: Capitalist Fools: Tales of American Business, from Carnegie to Forbes to the Milken Gang ( 1992 ) and Citizen Cohn ( 1988 ), a biography of Roy Cohn, which was made into an HBO movie.

* Capitalist Fools: Tales of American Business, from Carnegie to Forbes to the Milken Gang

In 1987, Lewis bought Beatrice International Foods from Beatrice Companies for $ 985 million, renaming it TLC Beatrice International, a snack food, beverage, and grocery store conglomerate that was the largest African-American owned and managed business in the U. S. The deal was partly financed through Mike Milken of the maverick investment bank Drexel Burnham Lambert.

After retaliation from the federal government, and mind you during prosecution, Mike Milken embodied the hearts of many loyal advocates, employees, and financiers alike to keep Drexel & Co. afloat.

" From a brief interview with Milken after his release, quote, " Our structure consisted of top-down hierarchical which benefited everyone from an associate trader to a managing director in the same regards.

Michael Robert Milken ( born July 4, 1946 ) is an American business magnate, financier, and philanthropist noted for his role in the development of the market for high-yield bonds ( also called " junk bonds ") during the 1970s and 1980s, for his 1990 guilty plea to felony charges for violating US securities laws, and for his funding of medical research.

Stone claims that Milken viewed the securities laws, rules and regulations with a degree of contempt, feeling they hindered the free flow of trade.

On April 24, 1990, Milken pleaded guilty to six counts of securities and tax violations.