Michael Robert Milken was born on the 4th July 1946, in Encino, California USA, and is a former financier and investment banker. Milken was one of the main participants in the creation of the so-called ‘junk bond’ in the 1970s, hence his nickname ‘the junk bond king’. Michael was imprisoned for financial fraud in 1989, and is considered a symbol of greed in Wall Street during the 1980s. However, he is one of the 500 richest people in the world according to the data of Forbes magazine.
How rich is the former financier? It has been estimated by authoritative sources that the total size of Michael Milken’s net worth is as much as $2.5 billion, as of the data presented in the middle of 2016. Investments are the main source of Milken’s wealth.
Michael Milken Net Worth $2.5 Million
To begin with, Milken was raised in Encino, California. He earned a Bachelors degree with honours from the University of California at Berkeley, and then graduated with an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. During his MBA studies he researched profitable bonds, which were main issues by firms in difficulty. Despite the higher yield few investors were willing to invest in these bonds, as they presented a significant risk. Milken’s research said that the yield was still above average, in comparison to the higher risk, and later he was able to build an investment bank. From 1969, Milken worked for the New York investment bank Drexel Harriman Ripley, initially while at college and then full-time, responsible for non-investment-grade bonds, and generated investment returns of up to 100%, so that by 1976, he had an estimated income of $5 million dollars per year, considerably enhancing his net worth.
In 1978, Milken shifted his department to California, and expanded his business with profitable junk bonds at Drexel Burnham Lambert, which was one of the triggers for the variety of leveraged corporate purchases in the 1980s; he was able to place large debt on the financial markets for its customers, contributing significantly to the success of Drexel Burnham Lambert. The Company commanded $4 billion dollars in fees, and was the most profitable investment bank in USA in 1986. The same year Milken received $550 million in salary and bonuses, which, needless to say, has significantly increased the outright size of his net worth.
In the middle of 1989, Milken withdrew from Drexel and founded his own company, International Capital Access Group. In 1989, Milken was on financial fraud in federal court by the New York District Attorney Rudolph Giuliani, based on the RICO Act. However, this did not result in conviction, partly because Milken’s ideas were new and seldom understood, even though usually legal. After further investigation Milken pleaded guilty on five points, and had to pay a $200 million fine, and an Additional $400 million for compensations in civil litigation. Originally Milken was sentenced to 10 years in prison, but was released after 22 months in 1993. He was excluded from trading for life. In 1998, he paid $47 million fine to the SEC, because he had violated this restriction by working as a consultant for MCI and Revlon.
In 1993, he was diagnosed with cancer; in the same year, Milken launched the non-profit organization Prostate Cancer Foundation (PCF). In 2003, he founded the charitable organization Faster Cures/The Center for Accelerating Medical Solutions, that supports the organization Patients Helping Doctors founded in 2004. Together with his brother Lowell and Larry Ellison, he founded the training company Knowledge Universe in 1996.
Finally, in the personal life of Michael Milken, he has been married to high school sweetheart Lori Anne Hackel since 1968 – the family has three children.
