Sajjad, good question. Michael Milken sort of invented junk bond offerings to finance the leveraged buyouts of the 1980s. He put together the deals by selling the bonds through, if memory serves, Drexel Burnham. In his final year--again, this sticks in my mind, but I may be fabulating--his bonus was $500 million. I know that's not much by today's standards, but then it was a lot. Shortly thereafter he was tried and imprisoned for insider trading (someone will correct me on this if I'm wrong). He got out not long ago. Ted Turner, taking pity on the poor fellow, supposedly funneled him $50 million for his "assistance" in putting together the Time Warner Turner merger. Aside from funding prostate cancer research, his new thing, according to the papers, is venture capital promoting distance learning. Video over the Internet would at any rate fit right in with that vision.
Hope that helps, assuming it's more or less accurate.
J |
