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. He is a graduate of the Michigan State University College of Law (formerly Detroit College of Law).

By 1986, Ivan Boesky had become an arbitrageur who had amassed a fortune of about US$200 million by betting on corporate takeovers. He was investigated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission 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.

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. Although he was released after two years, he was barred from working in the securities business for the remainder of his life. He served his prison sentence at Lompoc FPC near Vandenburg AFB in California. He started out working irrigation on the 3000 head cattle ranch but moved to taking care of the flower beds at the dairy.

In the United Kingdom during 1987 four men were charged with an array of financial offences. The case of the "Guinness Four" in 1990 was dubbed "the trial of the 20th century". Former Guinness Chief Executive Ernest Saunders was jailed for false accounting, conspiracy and theft. Trader Anthony Parnes and businessman Gerald Ronson were jailed for false accounting and theft. The millionaire financier Sir Jack Lyons was heavily fined and stripped of his knighthood. 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. Whatever persuaded Ernest Saunders to sanction the investment, it was to prove one of the most momentous decisions of their lives.

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. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself") which inspired the key speech by Gordon Gekko in the 1987 movie Wall Street.

External link

• Ivan Boesky at Notable Names Database

Jewish-American businesspeople | 1937 births | Living people | Stock and commodity market managers | Prisoners convicted of white-collar crimes | American criminals | Fraudsters | People from Detroit

Ivan F. Boesky