Ivan Boesky

Financier, born in Detroit, Michigan, USA. The son of a Russian immigrant, he studied law and worked as a tax accountant before moving into securities analysis, forming his own firm in 1975. Credited with (or blamed for) pioneering the junk-bond market, later a symbol of the excesses of the 1980s, he had become one of Wall Street's most successful arbitragers when he admitted to insider trading charges in 1986. Fined $100 million, he served time in prison before being given parole for good behaviour in 1990.

Ivan Frederick Boesky (born March 6, 1937 in Detroit, Michigan) was notable for his prominent role in a Wall Street insider trading scandal that occurred in the United States in the mid-1980s. Boesky was born to a Russian-Jewish family.

By 1986, Ivan Boesky had become an arbitrageur who had amassed a fortune of about US$200 million by betting on corporate takeovers.

Although insider trading of this kind was illegal, laws prohibiting it were rarely enforced until Boesky was prosecuted. Boesky cooperated with the SEC and informed on several of his insiders, including junk bond trader Michael Milken. As a result of a plea bargain Boesky received a prison sentence of 3.5 years and was fined US$100 million.

In the United Kingdom during 1987 four men were charged with an array of financial offences. Former Guinness Chief Executive Ernest Saunders was jailed for false accounting, conspiracy and theft. Their downfall was prompted by the arrest for insider dealing of Ivan Boesky. In a plea bargain, he told US authorities of a share dealing arrangement organised to underpin Guinness's stock price when it was pursuing Distillers, to trump rival bidders Argyll.

Boesky has never recovered his reputation after doing a stint in jail, and paying hundreds of millions of dollars in fines and compensation for his Guinness role and a host of separate insider dealing scams.

Having met Ernest Saunders through Gerald Ronson, it was agreed that in return for taking part in the share support operation, Guinness would invest $100m in one of his arbitrage funds.

Boesky gave an infamous speech on the positive aspects of greed at the University of California, Berkeley in 1986 (where he said in part "I think greed is healthy.