Customer Reviews

The Predators' Ball: The Inside Story of Drexel Burnham and the Rise of the JunkBond Raiders

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This book, "Barbarians at the Gate" by Burrough and Helvar, and "Den of Thieves" by Stewart fully depict the defining events of Wall Street in the 1980's. Of this triumvirate, Ms. Connie Bruck's book is the only one that is more read than reported (both "Barbarians" and "Thieves" were written by WSJ reporters), and it really delves into the personal lives and backgrounds of the major players at Drexel. In reading this text you are provided with a full description and understanding of Milken and the driving forces behind the firm, above all, you understand the trap he worked himself into through his own success and how he wound up victimized by the financial system that he worked within.

My version of the text is labeled on the front cover as, "The Book Wall Street Couldn't Stop," in reference to attempts to prevent its publishing. I believe that those persons that wanted to do so are now content with their failure, as the book does a good job of explaining the brilliance of Milken, the market that he created and nurtured, and the catch-22 that led to his criminilization. As someone who works in banking, it is awe-inspiring to read the descriptions of Milken's deal-making capabilities and strategies, and at the same point disappointing to see how he slipped from operating in shades of grey to areas of wanting morals. The author does a very good job of illustrating the power Milken had within Drexel, how his office on the West Coast went from being a backwater to accounting for the bulk of the firms revenue, and how Milken's subsequent removal left Drexel crippled past the point of healing. The inter-office dynamics that Ms. Bruck writes on are present everywhere, but it is difficult to imagine anywhere that they are seen in such extremes.

I highly recommend this book.

This book was the first real insight into the world of junk bonds, Drexel Burham Lambert and what an important role they played in the business world. Written at a time when Drexel was at its peak, it was a groundbreaking, highly acclaimed book.

Connie Bruck ranks along with Joe Nocera as one of the world's best business writers. This book is tremendously readable and gives a balanced but insightful look at Michael Milken.

I came away from the book with the idea that Milken was a genius who earned his great fortune with 18 hour work days. and I still believe he had a tremendous and positive contribution to the world.

the Some of my friends came away from the book with the idea that Milken was a horrible human being who was ruining the country. The beauty of the book is that it you can read it and draw your own conclusions rather than a writer's preconceived ideas.

Buy it and read it again. It is worth always owning.

Don McNay...

"Predator's Ball" follows the rise of the junk bond market, from Michael Milken's ambitions in the 1970s through Drexel Burnham's dominance of the market under Milken's leadership in the 1980s, including Drexel's controversial financing of high-profile hostile takeovers, to the beginning of legal trouble for Drexel in 1986. Author Connie Bruck interviewed hundreds of people over a 2 ½-year period, including Drexel employees and Drexel clients, to learn what went on inside "the Department", Drexel's mythic Beverly Hills junk bond offices. Bruck becomes increasingly critical of Michael Milken's tactics as the book progresses, but it is worth noting that she did not set out to write an exposé. Bruck approached the project with sympathies "more toward Milken and his band of renegades than toward the corporate establishment they were attacking", but years of peering inside the Department changed her mind. Regardless of where your sympathies lie, there is a lot of admirable research and fascinating detail in "The Predator's Ball".

The story of the junk bond market is the story of Michael Milken's single-minded rise to power. Milken WAS the market, as they say. Accordingly, most of "The Predator's Ball" is dedicated to Milken's ambition to fund a new generation of businesses with high-yield low-rated bonds ("junk bonds"), his creation of a department at Drexel that embodied his unique views of productivity and capitalism, and the ways and means to Drexel's utter domination of the junk bond market in the 1980s. Milken's larger than life presence is nearly absent, however, from the book's three longest chapters, which detail successful hostile raids financed by Drexel: Nelson Peltz and Peter May's buyout of National Can, Carl Icahn takes TWA, and Ron Perelman's acquisition of Revlon. These chapters are something of a digression in the Milken story, as he was not front and center in the drama, but they provide blow-by-blow accounts of exactly how these leveraged buyouts worked and insight into the realities of LBOs. Michael Milken created a market for junk bonds where there was almost none, sought 100% market share for Drexel, and used that market to change the face of corporate America. He did it by astutely and commendably flouting convention, but did he flout ethics and law as well? Judge for yourself.

Predators ball by Connie Bruck is a recommended reading for the already discerned person, who has some knowledge of the real Milken story.

Bruck makes it clear how much her contempt for Milken and "his" Drexel company is, and yet she does not fail to point out the great achievement he made viable : giving capital to companies that had been previously disclosed from any kind of lending ability.

Her contempt for Milken and his working style is so deep, that she blames him of faults that have never been the cause of accusations against him, neither publicly nor through the DA or State attorneys. This is in particular sad, since up to a certain point she discovers the good sides of the Drexel revolution, but for example the fact that Drexel admiettedly rendered callgirls to its top customers at the socalled predators balls in LA makes in her mind every punishment acceptable and worth the effort.

Although the afterword was written long after the indictment and abjudication of Milken, the author does not invoke the causes of Milkens sentence, which were merely political and not based on a real assumption of the commitment of a crime. It should have come to the mind of any author, that a sentence that starts with the words "You have been the cause of the greedy century" is not a acceptable reasoning in legal terms, rather a description of contempt spurred by the sudden revelation of an extraordi- narily high salary. So we have to blame the author not only there but also in other areas of poor journalism; a book, on a living person in particular, should be based on facts rather than gossip of clients trying to get their heads out of the scaffold and prosecutors trying to wrench out a candidature for president of the prosecution of a single man.

Mrs Brook has undoubtedly written the first book on Milken, however it should be the first to get out of print unless she rewrites the important conclusion on the persons described.

Dr. Rudolf C. King CEO, princeandprince.com Ltd Owner of HouseOfCommerce Indonesia HouseOfCommerce@ibm.net Munich Germany

One of three must read books on the Michael Milken, Drexel Burnham Lambert 1970's & 80's era on Wall Street. Wonderful storytelling and accounting of the many deals financed with junk bonds by Milken & gang. The other two books, well written as well on Milken, are "Den of Thieves" by Pulitzer Prize winning WSJ writer James B. Stewart, written after Bruck's Ball, and "A License to Steal: The Untold Story of Micheal Milken and the Conspiracy to Bilk the Nation" by Benjamin J. Stein, written last of the three. Stay away from the fantasy work of Jesse Kornbluth's "Highly Confident -- The Crime and Punishment of Michael Milken". It's an authorized version of Milken's life, bought & paid for by Milken himself, who underwrote hatchet jobs on Bruck & Stein to discredit their stellar work.

The Predators' Ball does a great job of getting inside the various deals Milken pulled off and how they happened, along with a good history of Michael Milken. Amazing stuff, considering the multi-billion dollar nature of those deals... financed with nothing but junk. The sad thing is, is that if Milken had been caught in this current era of NO public tolerance for Wall Street misdeeds in 2002, he would be serving a hell of a lot more time then the mere 24 months he actually ended up doing on his ten year sentence. 98 counts, he cut a deal to plead guilty to six of them. He walked out of jail after a brief time of reflection, with his Billion$ still stached away in his foriegn bank accounts at his disposal. Crime did pay and pay well for Michael Milken. Stein's License to Steal book estimated that Milken generated some $24 Billion in commissions & fees, from obscene margins & unearthly volume. King of the Universe indeed... and walked away with a mere $1 Billion slap on the wrist fine and a few nights in jail. These three books are better than fiction or novels. History, in Wall Street storybook fashion. The more things change, the more things stay the same.

A year or two ago I heard someone refer to "the infamous Michael Milken," and I had no idea what they were talking about. This book gave me the answer. The Predators' Ball tells about the rise of Drexel Burham Lambert, a second-rate bank that was completely transformed by the arrival of Michael Milken and his plans with junk bonds. Milken broke ground in changing the way banks thought of junk bonds, those bonds that are so poorly rated that they are a substantially greater risk to investors. The flip side to this is that if you take a risk on a junk bond you also have the possibility of making significantly more money, as the rates are much higher.

Previously, other banks such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley wouldn't touch junk bonds, as they felt that junk bonds were "below" them. When they saw how much money Drexel Burham Lambert was making, they began to salivate for junk bonds too. Michael Milken pioneered this new change at Drexel Burham and became somewhat of a god-like figure. He made Drexel Burham king of the junk bond market. Milken decided he wanted to move to Southern California, and so he opened a Drexel Burham office there, bringing the best and the brightest in the company along with him. He and his partners would get to work at 4:30am and stay til the wee hours of the night. They were richly compensated for their efforts, and many became multi-millionaires in a very short period of time.

This book gives you terrific insight into the world of Drexel Burham at its apex, when it was at the top of the business world. It tells you about Michael Milken, his intense personality and the loyal following he built. It also explains some of the inconsistencies, conflicts of interest and other problems that brought Drexel Burham to its knees and put Milken in jail.

Even though this book was written many years ago, I learned a lot and enjoyed the story. I highly recommend it.

Based on the other reviews here you can gather what the book covers so I will not repeat that detail. I thought the most valuable parts of the book covered the way Milken operated, both his personality and the business he created and directed. There are a lot of interesting details covering him, but I thought that was a flaw in the book, it did not cover more of the other main characters in the 80's Junk Bond and M&A activity - people like Bosky, KKR etc. The book also describes how the Milken office because so powerful it was given free reign, the very point that ruined this company - similar to the Houston office of AA? The book also has the underlining theme that this activity and people were the worst part of American business and personal greed, that is an unfair characterization and you should keep that in mind while reading the book, a lot of good came out of this decade, it was not all doomed to failure. If this is your first book covering this topic I would suggest you read "Den of Thieves" by Stewart first, it was better written and more interesting. This is a good second step.

In the late 1980's Progressives in the media savagely blamed Mike Milken for the loss of thousands of jobs while alleging that his purported aim was to satiate his own greed. The truth is a little different. This book, in setting most of its focus on the nuances of the political battle and not enough on the reasons for the war, does what the major media does when it covers a political campaign. It focuses on the tactics and the strategy and the back room internecine political conflicts to the detriment of the real story. As mentioned, the real story is something quite different. ...

Yes, Drexel was an ugly firm. Connie Bruck's detailed account of the firm's rise to and fall from glory does a tremendous job of explaining exactly how and why junk bonds were so lucrative and so dangerous. This book will make it difficult to maintain that the highly leveraged buyout is anything better than the nuclear weapon of corporate finance--perhaps useful as a theoretical threat, but ruinous when actually implemented. This book also makes it clear that, with the exception of Michael Milken, few of the protagonists were especially talented or clever individuals--they were just at the right place in the right time.

Today the phrase "securities fraud" evokes Enron, WorldCom and Tyco. Two decades ago, it evoked Drexel Burnham Lambert, the investment bank that ruled the junk-bond realm and helped fund some of the most audacious corporate takeovers of the 1980s. Enthroned at the center of Drexel Burnham was the king of junk, Michael Milken. Was he a financial genius who found ever more clever ways to make markets more efficient? Or was he a swindler running the world's biggest Ponzi scheme? New Yorker writer Connie Bruck sets out to answer those questions in this cautionary tale of Drexel's rise and fall. getAbstract recommends this fascinating, highly detailed financial history. However, the flaw in Bruck's narrative is the absence of a third act: She inexplicably ends the book before Milken's trial and sentencing. While its ending is weak, this provocative story makes one thing clear: Uneasy lies the head that wears a leveraged crown.