Editing Michael Milken (section)

==Career==

Through his Wharton professors, Milken landed a summer job at [[Harriman, Ripley and Company|Drexel Harriman Ripley]], an old-line [[investment bank]], in 1969. After completing his MBA, he joined Drexel (by then known as Drexel Firestone) as director of low-grade bond research. He was also given control of some capital and permitted to trade. Over the next 17 years, he had only four down months.<ref name="HC"/>

Drexel merged with Burnham and Company in 1973 to form Drexel Burnham. Despite the firm's name, Burnham was the nominal survivor; the Drexel name came first only at the insistence of the more powerful investment banks, whose blessing was necessary for the merged firm to inherit Drexel's position as a "major" firm.

Milken was one of the few prominent holdovers from the Drexel side of the merger, and he became the merged firm's head of [[Convertible security|convertibles]]. He persuaded his new boss, fellow Wharton alumnus Tubby Burnham, to let him start a high-yield bond trading department—an operation that soon earned a 100 percent return on investment.<ref name="HC">{{cite book|last=Kornbluth|first=Jesse|title=Highly Confident: The Crime and Punishment of Michael Milken|year=1992|publisher=[[William Morrow and Company]]|location=New York City|isbn=0-688-10937-3|url=https://archive.org/details/highlyconfidentc00korn}}</ref> By 1976, Milken's income at the firm, which had become [[Drexel Burnham Lambert]], was estimated at $5 million a year. In 1978, Milken moved the high-yield bond operation to [[Century City]] in Los Angeles.<ref name=LA.ask>{{cite news
|quote="Finally, in 1978, Milken asked to move the junk bond trading operation from New York to the Century City section of Los Angeles."
|title=Pioneer, Billionaire--and, Soon, Unemployed: Michael Milken
|url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-01-26-fi-2010-story.html
|newspaper=Los Angeles Times
|date=January 26, 1989
|access-date=February 21, 2020
|archive-date=June 7, 2015
|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150607131804/http://articles.latimes.com/1989-01-26/business/fi-2010_1_junk-bond/2
|url-status=live
}}</ref><ref name=LA.mov>{{cite news
|quote="Drexel Burnham Lambert{{nbsp}}... moved its high-yield bond group to Century City in 1978"
|newspaper=Los Angeles Times
|title=Junk bond king Michael Milken looms large in LA
|url=https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-milken-drexel-legacy-20160501-story.html
|date=May 1, 2016
|access-date=February 21, 2020
|archive-date=March 8, 2020
|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200308165313/https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-milken-drexel-legacy-20160501-story.html
|url-status=live
}}</ref><ref>{{cite news
|quote="Mike Milken, the 30-year-old head of the corporate{{nbsp}}... Hunched behind a borrowed desk in a cubicle in Century City the other day"
|newspaper=The New York Times
|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1978/01/29/archives/spotlight-mohammed-and-the-mountain.html
|title=Spotlight - Mohammed and the mountain
|date=January 29, 1978
|page=5
|access-date=January 27, 2019
|archive-date=August 2, 2018
|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180802193050/https://www.nytimes.com/1978/01/29/archives/spotlight-mohammed-and-the-mountain.html
|url-status=live
}}</ref>

===High-yield bonds and leveraged buyouts===
{{History of private equity and venture capital}}
{{See also|Private equity in the 1980s}}

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 that enabled him to raise large amounts of money quickly.

This money-raising ability also facilitated the activities of [[leveraged buyout]] (LBO) firms such as [[Kohlberg Kravis Roberts]] and of the so-called "[[greenmail]]ers". Most of them were armed with a "[[highly confident letter]]" from Drexel, a tool Drexel's corporate finance wing crafted that promised to raise the necessary debt in time to fulfill the buyer's obligations. It carried no legal status, but by that time Milken had a reputation for being able to make markets for any bonds that he underwrote. For this reason, "highly confident letters" were considered to reliably demonstrate capacity to pay.<ref>{{cite book |quote="The firm could issue a "highly confident" letter, a formal pledge from Drexel that{{nbsp}}..." |title=Den of Thieves |page=133
|url=https://books.google.com/books?isbn=067179227X |isbn=067179227X
|author=James B. Stewart |date=1992|publisher=Simon and Schuster }}</ref><ref name=HiConTimes>{{cite news
|quote="Just as when Mike Milken was riding high{{nbsp}}... as good as cash in hand."
|newspaper=The New York Times
|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1994/06/26/business/market-watch-once-again-a-time-to-be-highly-confident.html
|title=MARKET WATCH - Once Again, A Time to Be Highly Confident
|author=Floyd Norris
|date=June 26, 1994
|access-date=August 2, 2018
|archive-date=August 2, 2018
|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180802132139/https://www.nytimes.com/1994/06/26/business/market-watch-once-again-a-time-to-be-highly-confident.html
|url-status=live
}}</ref> Supporters, like [[George Gilder]] in his book ''Telecosm'' (2000), state that Milken was "a key source of the organizational changes that have impelled economic growth over the last twenty years. Most striking was the productivity surge in capital, as Milken{{nbsp}}... and others took the vast sums trapped in old-line businesses and put them back into the markets."<ref>{{cite book|last=Gilder|first=George|title=Telecosm: How Infinite Bandwidth Will Revolutionize Our World|year=2000|publisher=[[Simon & Schuster]]|isbn=9780743215947|author-link=George Gilder|page=170}}</ref>

Despite his influence in the financial world during the 1980s, (at least one source called him the most powerful American financier since [[J. P. Morgan]]),<ref name="April Fools">{{cite book |author=Dan G. Stone |title=April Fools: An Insider's Account of the Rise and Collapse of Drexel Burnham |year=1990 |publisher=Donald I. Fine |location=New York |isbn=1-55611-228-9 |url=https://archive.org/details/aprilfoolsinside00ston }}</ref> Milken is an intensely private man who shuns publicity; he reportedly owned almost all photographs taken of him.<ref name="HC"/><ref name="SecretAgent.NYT"/>

===Later career===

Milken and his brother [[Lowell Milken|Lowell]] founded [[Knowledge Universe]] in 1996, as well as Knowledge Learning Corporation (KLC), the parent company of [[KinderCare Learning Centers]], the largest for-profit [[child care]] provider in the country. Michael Milken was chairman of Knowledge Universe until it was sold in 2015.<ref name=OregonBusiness>{{cite magazine |url=http://www.oregonbusiness.com/articles/96-february-2011/4739-knowledge-universe-reaches-16-billion-in-revenue |title=Knowledge Universe reaches $1.6 billion in revenue |magazine=Oregon Business |date=February 2011 |access-date=January 9, 2011 |url-status= |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110207075627/http://www.oregonbusiness.com/articles/96-february-2011/4739-knowledge-universe-reaches-16-billion-in-revenue |archive-date=February 7, 2011}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|url=https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/junk-bond-king-milken-is-back-plans-to-raise-1bn/articleshow/1785643.cms|title=Junk bond king Milken is back, plans to raise $1bn|newspaper=The Economic Times|access-date=August 3, 2020|archive-date=October 27, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201027145640/https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/junk-bond-king-milken-is-back-plans-to-raise-1bn/articleshow/1785643.cms|url-status=live}}</ref>

He invested in [[Stride, Inc.|K12 Inc.]], a publicly traded [[education management organization]] (EMO) that provides online schooling, including to [[charter school]] students, for whom services are paid by tax dollars,<ref name="saul">{{cite news|author=Stephanie Saul|author-link=Stephanie Saul|title=Profits and Questions at Online Charter Schools|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/13/education/online-schools-score-better-on-wall-street-than-in-classrooms.html|newspaper=The New York Times|date=December 12, 2011|access-date=July 17, 2012|archive-date=June 19, 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120619230246/http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/13/education/online-schools-score-better-on-wall-street-than-in-classrooms.html|url-status=live}}</ref> which is the largest EMO in terms of enrollment.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://nepc.colorado.edu/files/EMO-profiles-10-11_0.pdf |title=Archived copy |access-date=July 17, 2012 |archive-date=April 19, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120419062742/http://nepc.colorado.edu/files/EMO-profiles-10-11_0.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref>