Ivan Boesky

Ivan Frederick Boesky (born March 6, 1937) is an American stock trader who is notable for his prominent role in a Wall Street insider trading scandal that occurred in the United States in the mid-1980s.

Life and career

Boesky was born in Detroit, Michigan, to a Jewish family.^[1] He attended the Cranbrook Kingswood School in Bloomfield Hills before graduating from Detroit's Mumford High School. He then took courses at Wayne State University, Eastern Michigan University and the University of Michigan. He was admitted to Detroit College of Law (now Michigan State University College of Law) despite lacking an undergraduate degree and graduated in 1965.^[2][3] In the 1980s, he served as an Adjunct Professor at Columbia University's Graduate School of Business and at New York University's Graduate School of Business.^[4]

By 1986, Boesky had become an arbitrageur who had amassed a fortune of more than US$200 million by betting on corporate takeovers and had also gained control as Chairman of The Beverly Hills Hotel Corp. (after the death of his father-in-law who had run it for 25 years). The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigated him for making investments based on tips received from corporate insiders. These stock acquisitions were sometimes brazen, with massive purchases occurring only a few days before a corporation announced a takeover. Boesky was on the cover of Time magazine December 1, 1986.^[5]

Although insider trading of this kind was illegal, laws prohibiting it were rarely enforced until Boesky was prosecuted.^[6] Boesky cooperated with the SEC and informed, including the case against financier Michael Milken. As a result of a plea bargain Boesky received a prison sentence of 3.5 years and was fined US$100 million. Although he was released after two years, he was permanently barred from working in securities.^[7] He served his sentence at Lompoc Federal Prison Camp near Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

Boesky never recovered his reputation after doing a stint in prison, and paid hundreds of millions of dollars in fines and compensation for his Guinness share-trading fraud role and a number of separate insider dealing scams. Later, he embraced his Judaism and even took classes at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America where he had been a major donor; however, in 1987, following the fallout from his financial scandal, The New York Times reported that "after Ivan F. Boesky had been fined $100 million in the insider-trading scandal, the Jewish Theological Seminary, acting at his request, took his name off its $20 million library."^[1]

His involvement in criminal activities is recounted in the book Den of Thieves by James B. Stewart.

Another version of these events is recounted by Jonathan Guinness in his book "Requiem for a Family Business" which suggests the SEC granted him immunity from prosecution and allowed him to continue to insider trade for significant profit whilst wire tapping him to entrap others.

In popular culture

• The character of Gordon Gekko in the 1987 movie Wall Street is based at least in part on Boesky, especially regarding a famous speech he delivered on the positive aspects of greed at the University of California, Berkeley in 1986, where he said in part "I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself".^[8][9][10]
• In a 1993 episode of Animaniacs entitled "Plane Pals", the Warner siblings harass a tightly-wound Wall Street accountant named Ivan Blowsky, when he is forced to sit next to them on an airplane.
• The character Charlotte, a high-stakes CEO, on Rugrats has two fish in her office named "Boesky" and "Vesco".
• Boesky is mentioned in the episode Last Days of the television series Sliders: after an asteroid fails to destroy the Earth of the dimension they are in, Rembrandt Brown sees an article in a newspaper stating that Boesky had bought half of the houses in Beverly Hills for $10,000 dollars apiece, and that the erstwhile owners want their houses back.
• In the 2001 film Ocean's Eleven, Brad Pitt's character, Rusty Ryan, mentions a type of confidence scam termed "a Boesky" that involves a wealthy bankroller with insider information.
• Boesky also makes an appearance in the novel Gump and Co..
• In The Shield, Vic Mackey states that there will be a "money laundering operation which would make Ivan Boesky flinch".
• In Season 2, Episode 3 of "Psych"("Psy vs. Psy"), the Federal Treasury agent claims to have arrested Ivan Boesky himself.
• In the novel American Psycho, Craig McDermott wins a halloween costume party dressed as Ivan Boesky
• In the episode of Futurama, Future Stock, an 80s Wall Street character, reminiscent of Gordon Gekko, said of his glory days: "I was having whisky with Boesky and cookies with Milken."
• Famous hacker Kevin Mitnick recollects his encounters with Boesky in the prison in his book Ghost in the Wires.
• In the musical The Wedding Singer (based on the Adam Sandler/ Drew Barrymore movie), the character Glen Guglia mentions that "Boesky bought half, and if Ivan's buying, you know it's in the money."
• The sequel to Forrest Gump, the Winston Groom book Gump & Company, had the protagonist Forrest Gump being hired by Boesky. Gump, having trouble with the name, often refers to him as "Mr. Bozosky". Gump also later begins to wonder how he is being able to command such a high salary for only having to sign papers.

References