Milken: Four-Thirty AM Cathedral-Builder With No Office

“Milken believed that people were at their most productive when they felt they were part of a collective enterprise. There could, therefore, be no stars, and that included him. That was why he refused to have his picture in Drexel’s annual report—it would detract from the team spirit. He had no office, only his desk on the trading floor, for the same reason. He had no meaningful title in the firm, and there were no meaningful titles in his group; no one was to be ranked over someone else. (As Milken had mentioned, his group’s Christmas card, in the form of a bond, was an undifferentiated printing of the names of all its members—a graphic illustration of this principle.) He would not, of course, have allowed the members of his group to speak to the press, because of his insistence upon secrecy and control; but he also mentioned that he did not want his people to start thinking of themselves as stars. It would be harder to motivate them, come four-thirty Monday morning.”

“As though to underline this desire for structural egalitarianism, Milken had no office. On the infrequent occasions when he was away from his desk in the center of the trading floor, he urged others to use it. Meetings were generally open to all who were interested. People were encouraged to perform numerous functions. In a later SEC deposition, given in 1982, Milken described some people in his group as “quasi-trader salesmen,” explaining that “on a given day he could be primarily selling, and another day he could be trading. Another day he could be doing something else.””