Where is michael milken today

List of Partners vendors. Your Money. Personal Finance. Your Practice. Popular Courses. Who Is Michael Milken?

Key Takeaways Michael Milken is a philanthropist and current chair of a nonprofit think tank called Milken Institute. He joined Drexel Burnham Lambert in and started trading in high-yield bonds which earned him the nickname Junk Bond King in the s. Milken was indicted and spent nearly two years in prison after pleading guilty to charges of securities fraud. Milken was banned for life from the securities industry. Article Sources. Investopedia requires writers to use primary sources to support their work.

These include white papers, government data, original reporting, and interviews with industry experts. We also reference original research from other reputable publishers where appropriate.

You can learn more about the standards we follow in producing accurate, unbiased content in our editorial policy. Compare Accounts. The offers that appear in this table are from partnerships from which Investopedia receives compensation.

This compensation may impact how and where listings appear. He ultimately pleaded guilty to six felony charges of securities fraud and spent 22 months in prison. Milken became a philanthropist after his release from prison and donated money to cancer research after his own diagnosis in Even though he was given 18 months to live at the time, he made a full recovery.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. Michael Milken was born to Jewish parents in California. He's married to his high-school sweetheart. After he graduated from Wharton, Milken started working at Drexel Burnham Lambert, where his work popularizing the use of high-yield bonds — popularly known as "junk bonds" — transformed Drexel into one of the largest banks on Wall Street. Drexel filed for bankruptcy in , shortly after Milken's conviction; it is now defunct. At Drexel Burnham, Milken provided funding to companies that had previously been unable to secure funding through standard investment-grade bonds.

Neither junk bonds nor leveraged buyouts were invented in the '80s, but Milken was a key figure in expanding their use on Wall Street during the decade. He also help Craig McCaw, a cellphone-industry entrepreneur. Milken also provided US Sen. Milken's '80s-era heyday coincided with the emergence of a new breed of investors on Wall Street, many of whom are still active today, including Carl Icahn and Ronald Perelman.

Milken's compensation was brought up when then-US Attorney Rudy Giuliani charged Milken with "racketeering, insider trading, and securities fraud. His sentence was reduced to two years, which he served in the early s.

The pardon doesn't affect his lifetime ban from working in the securities industry, the White House said Tuesday. Milken, a prostate cancer survivor, chairs a nonprofit think tank called the Milken Institute and is a philanthropist who donates to charities that fund cancer research. Milken has spoken at the event, sometimes giving advice on investing.

Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Milken, Boesky, Pickens, Rigas, Ebbers: Their names were once household words, back in the s, s, and s: Financial fraudsters who lived the high life until their crimes or purported crimes brought them down.

In February , two of them were back in the news. Let's check in with this financial five, to see where they are today. Pleading guilty in to six felony counts of securities fraud and conspiracy, he was sentenced to 10 years at a federal minimum-security prison and was barred for life by the SEC from working in the securities field.

He served nearly two years, before being released with a diagnosis of prostate cancer. After his release, Milken reinvented himself into a leader in business education and crusader against cancer: His website describes him as a medical research innovator, philanthropist, and financier.

He helped initiate Bizmore, a website dedicated to educating executives at small- and medium-sized companies on topics relevant to today's growing companies. He operates through a nonprofit think tank, the Milken Institute. On Feb. Considered one of America's richest stock market speculators in the late s and early '80s, "Ivan the Terrible" was arrested in for insider trading.

He was also barred by the Securities and Exchange Commission from the world of trading, and acted as a government informant on other financial industry malefactors, including Milken. The leading real-life model for the fictional Gordon Gekko in the film Wall Street, Boesky was also notorious for a commencement speech he gave at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Business Administration, in which he stated: "Greed is all right, by the way. I want you to know that.

I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself. After he left prison, Boesky enrolled in rabbinical studies and became involved in projects helping the homeless. Pickens got his start in the oil and gas industry in the s, founding the company that became Mesa Petroleum.

But he soon realized the potential in acquiring oil companies, and by the s, Pickens was known as a takeover specialist and corporate raider. His business tactics were said to put many independent oil producers out of business, throwing thousands of people out of work.

He was also accused of greenmail: Launching a takeover bid, then getting companies to buy back their shares from him at a premium in exchange for promises that he would just go away. Unlike the others on our list, Pickens was never charged, much less convicted, of any actual crime. But his arguably unscrupulous ways caught up with him in the mids; Mesa Petroleum ran into financial trouble, ironically became a target of corporate raiders, and finally was sold.