Greed Is All Right, By The Way - 3072 Words

Ivan Boesky at an audience of students at the University of California, Berkeley once stated, â€Å"Greed is all right, by the way. I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself (Homans, 2012, p.1)(Kay, 2003, p.1).† Greed was what lead Boesky to Insider Trading and ultimately huge illegal profits; the scam he created was hidden in plain sight. Boesky wanted everyone to believe that he was doing the world a service but he was actually stealing (Homans, 2012, p.1). According to the Encyclopedia of White-Collar Crime, insider trading is a securities fraud that involves the purchase and sale of a security while the purchaser has trusted or privileged information about the security unannounced to the public. The†¦show more content†¦Debra Ross in the Encyclopedia of White-Collar Crime defined arbitrage as: â€Å"(1) a transaction that generates a risk-free profit; (2) a leveraged speculative transaction; and (3) the activity of engaging i n either of the above two forms of arbitrage transactions (p. 31).† Boesky’s forte was trading stock in companies aimed for an acquisition or merger, and this type of enterprise is legal as long as the trade was based on public information of looming acquisitions. This case study will explore the life and crime of Ivan Boesky and those individuals who helped him. Boesky’s journey from a college dropout to a Wall Street executive is of a man obsessed with money and the lifestyle that it afforded. In the end, greed didn’t prevail, and many lives, laws, enterprises were impacted, often for the better. Ivan Boesky was born 1937 in Detroit where his father owned several bars, restaurants and delicatessens (Meserve, 2012). During his child hood, Boesky and his family lived in a nice Tudor-style house in an upper-middle-class neighborhood. Boesky’s parents were immigrants from Russia. Boesky worked hard in high school selling ice cream from a truck and wo uld often break curfew of 7 pm imposed by his license. Boesky did attend Cranbrook for a couple years, but he did not graduate. Although Boesky’s did not get good grades, he was a fantastic wrestler; winning the school’s