Victor Haghani discusses an attractive opportunity identified by Salomon Brothers’ fixed income arbitrage traders in 1988. But how much capital did the trade put at risk and how much of the trade should Salomon do?

In 2008, a global bank asked Flavio Bartmann to solve a problem that threatened a commercial paper and credit protection default. Such defaults would further disrupt a financial system already beset with crisis. Executing a solution required difficult negotiations with the bank, commercial paper investors, and credit protection counterparties.

Doug Watson met the “junk bond king” in 1988 when Milken was arguably the most important person in US capital markets. Doug witnessed a demonstration of Milken’s genius, but also clues that presaged Milken’s downfall a few months later when he was indicted on securities fraud.