It is always hard to say what it is about a man that makes him suited to overturn the conventions by which the rest of the world has been living for ages. In Milken’s case, it is especially difficult because he’s almost neurotically private and offers no helpful insights into his character to would-be biographers, other than the business he does. My view is that he combined two qualities that were, at the time of his ascendancy, regarded as mutually exclusive. They certainly did not co-exist within Salomon Brothers in the early 1980s. Milken possessed both raw bond trading skills and patience
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