I believe there is some truth to that. Also, IIRC, wasn't it the director (or script writer) for the original Wall Street that heavily studied Icahn, and also did an interview with him specifically FOR the movie to keep it up-to-date with the changing times. Almost everything with that movie is assumed to be based from Boesky & Milken, but I believe it was from Icahn. Some of the lines are almost verbatim.
Yeah that was Oliver Stone. The movie is largely based on Icahn if I remember correctly, except for the "Greed is Good" speech which is based on Ivan Boesky's commencement speech for UC Berkeley Business School grads in 1985. Milken & Boesky got most of the headlines so that is why most thought it was based on them. In reality Boesky was really a beneficiary of inside information form the Milken mafia and Milken himself was really an evangelist for his Junk Bond crusade he led most of his time at Drexel, Burnham & Lambert. Milken really made his money on the huge spreads from junk bonds that Drexel made markets in. I think from the time Milken's group moved from NJ to Beverly Hills which was 1978 I believe until the major Investment Banks entered the Junk Bond market Drexel made a killing. In fact if you read The Predator's Ball, Connie Bruck talks about how the "white shoe" banks like Goldman & Lazard looked down on Drexel until they became a behemoth in their own right.
I heard that Milken negotiated a payout similar to the equities guys. He made so much money that in 1 particular year his personal compensation was greater than the sum of all his competitors net incomes.
%% LOL Actually/if i remember his average in cost + usually do/ about $16 or less.IF he bought @ very top of $15 area in 2015+ he usually does better/looks like he is up 100%+/.[Old Forbes article+ my memory] Dont know when or if sold. About the same as Warren buffets ''mature'' age; except Mr Ichan had the peculiar pattern of stock picking , improving stocks, strangely so many of them went up, a lot after he disclosed his scale ins. Could call him a raider, but unlike many board members, he made billions for other shareholders,Nabisco Group Holdings........................................ I seldom do single stocks now, did some in JAN.
Yeah that's my memory of it -- its been a while since I read The Predator's Ball probably mid 1990s. I think it was 1984 or 1985 where Milken was on the cover of Business Week where the cover article was about how Milken made $750 million. I think the CEO Fred Joseph made like $50 million. The equity side of DBL was really minor compared to the debt side especially the high yield department in the Beverly Hills office. I think at the peak Milken's contribution was like 75-80% of the revenue. The LBO Raiders that Milken funded eventually would pay huge fees for DBL floating the bonds along with the warrants that the junk bond holders got as incentives. DBL did take a lot of the companies that got financing through Milken's group public so they did do a lot of business in IPOs. I think DBL also facilitated a lot of private placements as well as shelf registrations. I liked Milken but towards the end he was involved in some shady things like threatening the CEO & CFO of companies that didn't do what he wanted by buying up the bonds and saying he would foreclose on them. Of course there was the parking of shares he did for his friends who wanted to mask how much of a company they owned so they could buy up shares at a cheaper price versus if the street had caught on to a possible LBO.
I never read the Predator's Ball. It was on the reading list during my analyst program. What a crazy time that was! My old boss was a bond trader at Salomon in the mid 80s- late 80s. He had some fun stories to tell.
Carl Icahn’s company stock falls 15% after prosecutors seek financial information https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/10/car...r-prosecutors-seek-financial-information.html
%% You may be right. but that's on CNBC, not really known for good financial advice.LOL Of course on the few times i watched CNBC lately; they had the Jim rogers rebuke, the virus has been known for some time + noted MSFT uptrend .[Sure msft =down for the day but up YTD, up month, + good tech uptrend \NOT a stock tip]
CNBC will take both bear & bull advice by guests, which is ok. What I hate is how they end up getting too political and woke-correct at times... This is the reason I stopped using Yahoo back in the day. Then SURPRISE... everyone else also just switched to Google.
%% CANT stand to listen to CNBC + all that dumb drama during market hoursLOL After hours,OK. DIS Drags Down DOW[as if one goofy stock could goof up or down 29 well run companies]=CNBC headline [BEAR case]. DOW is a bit weak YTD\LOL Fed Governor Waller Casts Doubt On Need to Conduct Climate Change Test For Banks=Good / + common sense Bull case/CNBC headline SPY + tech sector look fairly good/YTD NONE of the banks where i live/ are woke broke.