Michael Milken

Michael Robert Milken (born July 4, 1946) is an American financier. He is known for his role in the development of the market for high-yield bonds ("junk bonds"), which led to his reputation as the "Junk Bond King", and his conviction and sentence following a guilty plea on felony charges for violating U.S. securities laws. Milken's compensation while head of the high-yield bond department at Drexel Burnham Lambert in the late 1980s exceeded $1 billion over a four-year period, a record for U.S. income at that time. Milken was indicted for racketeering and securities fraud in 1989 in an insider trading investigation. In a plea bargain, he pleaded guilty to securities and reporting violations but not to racketeering or insider trading. Milken was sentenced to ten years in prison, fined $600 million (although his personal website claims $200 million), and permanently barred from the securities industry by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. His sentence was later reduced to two years for cooperating with testimony against his former colleagues and for good behavior. Milken was pardoned by President Donald Trump in February 2020. Milken is a co-founder of the Milken Family Foundation, chairman of the Milken Institute, and founder of medical philanthropies funding research on melanoma, cancer, and other life-threatening diseases. A prostate cancer survivor, Milken has devoted significant resources to research on the disease.