Micheal Milken

Michael Milken is an American financier and philanthropist. He is noted for his role in the development of the market for high-yield bonds, for his conviction following a guilty plea on felony charges for violating U.S. Securities laws, and for his charitable giving. Michael Milken is named one of the '75 Most Influential People of the 21st Century' by Esquire magazine. In 1982, Milken and his brother Lowell founded the Milken Family Foundation to support medical research and education. Through the Milken Educator Awards (founded in 1985), the MFF has awarded a total of more than $60 million to more than 2,500 teachers. Other initiatives of the MFF are Milken Institute, Milken Scholars, TAP (The System for Teacher and Student Advancement), Mike's Math Club, Festival for Youth, and MFF Epilepsy Research Awards Program. Milken is currently the chairman of Milken Institute, headquartered in Santa Monica, California. Through his professors at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Milken landed a summer job at Drexel Harriman Ripley, an old-line investment bank in 1969. After receiving his MBA, he joined Drexel as a director of low-grade bond research. In 1973, Drexel merged with Burnham and Company and formed Derxel Burnham. There, Michael Milken persuaded is boss, Tubby Burnham, to let him start a high-yield bond trading department. This operation soon earned 100% return on investment. By 1976, his income was estimated at $5 million a year. By the mid-1980s, Milken's network of high-yield bond buyers, notably Fred Carr's Executive Life Insurance Company and Tom Spiegel's Columbia Savings & Loan, had reached a size which enabled him to raise large amounts of money very quickly. It was said 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. Cable TV companies, like John Malone's Tele-Communications Inc., were also favorite clients, as were