The Predators' Ball (1988)

The Predators' Ball: The Inside Story of Drexel Burnham and the Rise of the Junk Bond Raiders, by Wall Street Journal writer Connie Bruck, largely recounts the rise of Michael Milken, his firm Drexel Burnham Lambert, and the leveraged buyout boom they helped to fuel in the 1980s.

Overview

As the book was published at the apex of the leveraged buyout boom, it was subsequently updated to also address the impending collapse of Drexel Burnham and Michael Milken's conviction on various securities and reporting violations.

The title of the book is a reference to an event that Drexel Burnham hosted annually. Among the participants in the Predators' Ball were an array of private equity investors, corporate raiders such as Ron Perelman and Carl Icahn as well as institutional investors in high-yield bonds and management teams from companies that either had been or would be the targets of leveraged buyouts.

Michael Milken reportedly offered to pay the author for all of the copies of the book that would have been sold in exchange for stopping her work on Predators' Ball.

General sources

"No Target Seemed Too Big: The Predators' Ball". The New York Times, July 10, 1988

"Throwing the Book at Drexel". TIME, June 24, 2001