Ivan Boesky
Ivan Boesky was a Wall Street financier who coined the "greed is good" mantra and helped inspire the fictional character Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone's movie, Wall Street. A major player in the hostile takeover and junk bond craze, Boesky became a legend by committing vast sums to potential major deals, taking advantage of the small but predictable gains that follow takeover rumors. Once implicated in insider trading, Boesky cooperated with a brash young U.S. attorney named Rudolph Giuliani in a bid for leniency, uncovering a scandal that shattered promising careers, blemished some of the most respected U.S. investment brokerages and injected a certain paranoia into the securities industry. As part of a deal with investigators, he informed on a number of his associates and agreed to pay a $100 million fine to the SEC. Boesky was permanently banned from operating in the financial services industry. He died in May 2024 at the age of 87.
"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."
Once implicated in insider trading, he cooperated in a bid for leniency, uncovering a scandal that shattered promising careers, blemished some of the most respected U.S. investment brokerages and injected a certain paranoia into the securities industry.
He secretly taped three conversations with Michael Milken, the so-called “junk bond king” whose work with Drexel Burnham Lambert had revolutionized the credit markets.
He testified against Michael Milken, the junk bond king whose stunning rise and fall also epitomized the era.
He pleaded guilty in 1986 to insider trading and was sentenced to three years of prison and fined $100 million.
WALL STREET & REMARKS
Boesky was an arbitrageur, a risk-taker who made millions by betting on stocks thought to be the target of corporate takeovers.
He was once considered one of the richest and most influential risk-takers on Wall Street.
Described as a "money-orientated monomaniac," Boesky himself said his work was "a sickness I have in the face of which I am helpless."
He famously said in a 1986 commencement speech at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, that “greed is healthy,” inspiring in part to Gekko’s “greed is good” speech.
EARLY CAREER
With a degree from the Detroit College of Law, he worked as a law clerk to a U.S. District Court judge before joining the accounting firm Touche Ross.
He moved to Wall Street in 1966, joining L F Rothschild as a securities analyst.
He rose to power and fame as the world's leading takeover arbitrageur and made a fortune investing in stocks of companies that were takeover targets.
In 1981, he reputedly made more than $150m in profits from runs on CBS, Gulf Oil and Conoco.
In 1985, he established himself as the dean of the arbitrage business by writing a book titled Merger Mania.