Den of Thieves
by James B. Stewart
View on GoodreadsStewart's Pulitzer-backed account of the 1980s insider-trading scandal that took down Michael Milken, Ivan Boesky, Martin Siegel and Dennis Levine. He traces how the junk-bond boom and the arbitrage desks were wired together by illicit information flow, and how the case was built by flipping each man against the next.
Core ideas
- The 1980s takeover boom ran on stolen information, which means the returns were not skill and were never risk-adjusted
- Insider trading is a conspiracy problem before it is a securities problem, so it unravels through informants rather than through market data
- Prosecuting finance requires turning insiders against each other, and that dependence shapes which cases get brought
Published1991
Pages592
ISBN9780671792275
ReadSep 2026
