Rogue Traders: Michael Milken

Rising to public prominence in the 1980s when the media latched onto his revolutions in the junk bond market, he made leveraged buyouts much easier and was subsequently nicknamed the ‘Junk Bond King’. Famous for his ‘X’ shaped desk, detractors often tried to use him as a figurehead for Wall Street greed, and much was made of the fact his salary and bonus in 1987 totalled $550m. We think they were just jealous as their desks weren’t as cool.

In reality, the nickname is misleading; Milken’s influence began much earlier and his work as a financier stretches further than high-yield bonds. His theories on credit risk and capital structure developed in the 1960s and 1970s are now routinely taught in business schools. And he helped define a large part of the structure of modern global finance.

His finance career came to an abrupt end when he was controversially charged with six counts of securities fraud. After spending 22 months in prison he was diagnosed with prostate cancer and was shocked at the lack of information about such a common illness. He began to raise awareness for the disease and took it upon himself to facilitate a much more fluid process for scientists receiving research grants. His impact has been so wide that he has been referred to as ‘the man who changed medicine’. Not bad for a banker…