Drexel, 25 Years After Its Collapse, Only Helps a Résumé

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Michael R. Milken at Drexel Burnham Lambert in 1978.Credit Neal Boenzi/The New York Times

Edwin Kantor, the onetime head of trading at Drexel Burnham Lambert, told The New York Times in 1995, “People used to be afraid to put Drexel on their résumé.”

“Now they want it to be there.”

Today, 25 years after Drexel collapsed, alumni of the investment bank occupy some of the most powerful positions in finance. An association with Drexel, which filed for bankruptcy on Feb. 13, 1990, is now worn as a badge of pride.

It was not always so. The firm, which became a powerhouse by pioneering the market for junk bonds in the 1980s, admitted to six felony counts in 1988. Its head of junk bonds, Michael R. Milken, who had been caught up in a sweeping insider trading scandal, pleaded guilty to securities fraud in 1990, paid $600 million in fines and restitution and spent two years in prison.

But the misdeeds of Mr. Milken have not tainted his colleagues. Even Mr. Milken has gone a long way toward reinventing his image. Young traders and bankers at Drexel were seen as risk-loving and talented. A number went on to start or run successful firms like Apollo Global Management and the Jefferies Group.

“When I travel, the minute I mention Drexel, the meeting stops and people want to know what it was all about, what was Drexel like,” Mr. Kantor told The Times 20 years ago.

Below is a look at some of the Drexel alumni and where they ended up.

Leon D. Black, the former head of mergers and acquisitions at Drexel, co-founded Apollo in 1990 with two colleagues from Drexel, Joshua Harris and Marc Rowan. Today, Apollo is one of the giants of private equity and credit investing, with nearly $160 billion in assets under management, and the three founders are billionaires.

Richard B. Handler, who was a 28-year-old trader at Drexel when the firm went under, is now the chief executive of the investment bank Jefferies and of its parent company, the Leucadia National Corporation. Working at Drexel “showed you the sky was the limit,” Mr. Handler told The Times in 2005.

Jonathan D. Sokoloff, John G. Danhakl and Peter J. Nolan, three young corporate finance executives at Drexel, reunited at the private equity firm Leonard Green & Partners, which has made successful bets on companies like Whole Foods and Shake Shack.

Kenneth D. Moelis, a former Drexel managing director, became the president of the investment bank at UBS before founding his own investment bank, Moelis & Company, which last year had its initial public offering.

Antony P. Ressler, a former senior vice president at Drexel, worked with Mr. Black at Apollo before co-founding Ares Management, a private equity and debt investing firm that also went public last year.

Mr. Milken, once known as the king of junk bonds, has experienced a remarkable rehabilitation of his image. He is known today for his contributions to medical research and for the annual ideas conference that his Milken Institute sponsors in Los Angeles. He received a lifetime ban from the securities industry as a result of his guilty plea.