Free The Predators’ Ball by Connie Bruck

fourth-year associate at Irell, clearly destined to make partner. But with his brother, at Drexel, he could utilize all he had learned at Irell and Manella and do much more.
    Michael Milken had been investing for his brother as well as for himself for years, and by this time the Milken assets were probably between $25 million and $50 million. Lowell Milken came in to manage those assets; as those of Milken’s high-yield group grew, he would manage those as well. At Irell he had done tax work for small entrepreneurs; now he set about constructing tax shelters for his, his brother’s and the group’s incomes. Movies, including those produced by Dino De Laurentiis, became a favorite shelter. According to two former Drexel partners, they believed that these shelters were so effective that Michael Milken paid relatively little in taxes.
    During the next several years, Lowell Milken would form a company at Drexel named Cambrent Financial Group, which would function as a service arm for the Milkens and the high-yield group and employ a handful of lawyers. Lowell Milken would draw on his Irell and Manella connections for talent, hiring two of the firm’s outstanding lawyers, Edward Victor and Craig Cogut. Richard Sandler, who had been Lowell’s close friend when they were growing up and had attended UC Berkeley and UCLA Law School with him, also joined and functioned as Michael Milken’s personal attorney. Cambrent would be located at Drexel—adjacent to Milken’s trading floor, in fact. But it would have no relationship to Drexel. And its very existence would underline the utter separatism of the Milken operation.
    Lowell Milken was the technician with the green eyeshade, the administrator of the empire. But he would also be his brother’s closest adviser and probably his sole confidant. His office was shouting distance from Michael Milken’s desk in the center of the trading floor. Friends of both say that Michael trusted his brother to do the equity analysis that he did not have time to do himself. While Michael was a creative fount of ideas, in perpetual intellectual motion, Lowell distilled, rejected, organized, and attended to the legalities. He was a fail-safe mechanism for Michael. Michael made no important decision without consulting his brother.
    Other functions of Lowell’s are less touted. Shorter than Michael, also sporting a toupee, Lowell was so abrasive that he would soon make Michael—notorious for driving his people by insult—look almost beneficent. The two did an effective good-guy/bad-guy routine. Michael would say, in response to a request from a group member, that it was fine with him, just check with Lowell; and then Lowell, his rage triggered at its mention, would summarily reject it. Lowell came to be regarded within the firm as Michael’s hatchet man and would be feared and disliked by some in Milken’s group. He shared his brother’s obsession with control, and it seemed to lapse over into his personal life as well; Lowell’s wife was said by employees at Drexel to wear a beeper. But however much animus existed between group members and Lowell, no one could come between the two brothers.
    Michael Milken’s power did not go to his head in a way that impaired him as a salesman. Not long after he arrived in L.A. he called James Caywood, who had just arrived in Houston to run a high-yield-bond fund named American General Capital Management.
    â€œMike said, ‘I hear you’re the new high-yield manager,’ ” Caywood recalled. “ ‘I’m Mike Milken. Why don’t you get on a plane, come out here, we’ll spend some time and talk about the high-yield market?’
    â€œI said, ‘Mike, I’ve been in this business ten years as a salesman. I know it’s customary for the salesman to come to see the customer.’
    â€œHe said, ‘You know, you’re right.’ And he walked in the door