Boesky, Ivan (1937–)

Ivan Frederick Boesky, born on March 6, 1937, in Detroit, Michigan, is most well known for his involvement in a Wall Street insider trading scandal in the mid-1980s. The son of a Russian immigrant who became a top Detroit restaurateur and graduate of the Detroit School of Law, Boesky landed on Wall Street in 1966 as a stock analyst. With the assistance of his father-in-law, the real estate magnate Ben Silberstein, Boesky started his own arbitrage firm in 1975.

Throughout the early 1980s, Boesky, working as an arbitrage specialist and known affectionately as “Ivan the Terrible,” amassed a fortune estimated at approximately $200 million by betting on corporate takeovers and mergers. Boesky, along with other corporate financiers such as T. Boone Pickens and Sir James Goldsmith, ...

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