Hunters' Ball

What Is the Predators' Ball?

The Predators' Ball was an annual convention held by investment bank Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc. to match high-risk companies looking for financing with investors who wanted the high rewards that can accompany higher risk.

The Drexel conference, held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles, became known as the Predators' Ball since it highlighted as speakers a portion of the country's most noticeable corporate thieves and lenders who were likewise Drexel clients. After the principal convention in 1979, these conventions turned out to be progressively centered around setting up leveraged buyouts and hostile takeovers utilizing junk bonds.

Figuring out the Predators' Ball

Members at the Predator's Ball included private equity investors and corporate looters like Ron Perelman and Carl Icahn. The ball likewise pulled in institutional investors in high-yield bonds and management groups from companies that either had been or would be the targets of leveraged buyouts.

The term "hunters' ball" turned into the title of a book about the rise of junk bond trading and the fall of Drexel and Michael Milken. Milken is a giver and former criminal who, as an executive at Drexel during the 1980s, utilized high-yield junk bonds for corporate financing and mergers and acquisitions. From that point forward, hunters' ball has been utilized to allude to gatherings between high-net-worth investors who bring in their money through shorting, buyouts, and other aggressive strategies.

Connie Bruck's Predators' Ball Book

In 1988, Wall Street Journal journalist Connie Bruck composed the book "The Predators' Ball: The Inside Story of Drexel Burnham and the Rise of the Junk Bond Raiders" that portrays the rise of Milken, Drexel, and the leveraged buyout boom they assisted with fueling during the 1980s. Milken was distraught about the book and Time magazine reported that he offered to pay Bruck for all possible sales of the book in return for her quitting composing the book. She denied his offer.

Since the book was distributed at the level of the leveraged buyout boom, Bruck later refreshed it to address the approaching collapse of Drexel and Milken's conviction on different securities and reporting infringement.

That very year the book was distributed, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Milken and Drexel Burnham Lambert with insider trading and stock fraud in 1988. After a year, Milken was prosecuted by a federal stupendous jury and in the end spent almost two years in jail in the wake of conceding to charges of securities fraud.

Highlights

• From that point forward, hunters' ball has been utilized to allude to gatherings between high-net-worth investors who bring in their money through shorting, buyouts, and other aggressive strategies.
• The Predators' Ball was an annual convention held by investment bank Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc. to match high-risk companies looking for financing with investors who wanted the high rewards that can accompany higher risk.
• After the primary convention in 1979, these conventions turned out to be progressively centered around setting up leveraged buyouts and hostile takeovers utilizing junk bonds.