Rishav Lal Shrestha

EMBA, 2019 Fall

1. On scales of Low = 0 to High = 10, how would you score Milken on each of the Big Five personality
dimensions? How does the personality profile you have created for Milken explain his incredible comeback
after prison and cancer?

Mike Milken is a man of undeniably strong will. Defeating cancer, being accused as white color criminal,
going to jail for two years; returning with an incredible come back by raising 75 million dollars for prostate
cancer and founding Knowledge Universe (KU) is not a small feat.

Big five model is one of the models that describes most of the significant variations of human personalities.
The factors extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability and openness to experience
reflects how a person behaves at work.

I would like to scale Mike Milken as high as 10 on Big Five personality dimension. A man with high goals
and desire to achieve should always have high emotional stability and what better proves it better than
Milken himself. Cancer hits hard and one must have a high emotional stability to fight cancer let alone
improve your business fighting it. Always setting goals, a drive for perfection during all these turmoil
shows his unbending will.

“He made capital available to lots of individuals and lots of institutions that otherwise would not have
access to that capital and in particular would not have access to that capital for the purposes for which they
used it,” explains Boies, who once was involved in litigation, later settled, Milken. He was the man that
made many billionaires and was favored by them later during his philanthropic work. When we think about
his likableness among the crowds, he seemed to had lost it when he was sentenced to jail. Being accused as
white color criminal diminished should have taken as toll. He was an extrovert and this might be the reason
that he is still an icon in wall street.

Milken was said to be a very manipulative person and only seemed to be happy when he won over someone
about ways of thinking over things. As his competition grew, he tried to use his massive capital in various
business(Junk bonds/ high yield bonds). He could not miss the trade. As defined by big five personality
model, was he open to openness? Of course he was and his desperation to outgrow his competitors made
him to do business with nearly anyone, even when he had been warned against it. According to 1996 New
York Magazine, ten years sentence in prison broke him down completely. He screamed and wailed so
loudly that it was heard all over the court.

Mike Milken the junk bond king, a seventy-year-old ex- convict was banned from his own game. “There is
no second acts in American lives”, as said by Scott Filzgerald. Though true for most cases but not for Mike
Milken. He was charged with $600 million fine for insider trading and paid $500 million to Drxel’s private
investors. And yet he ranked 222 in 2013’s Forbes 400 list with a personal fortune of $2.5 billion. His
legacy is still spoken in Wallstreet in glowing terms.

With prostate cancer never slowing down, working up to 15 hours a day, seven days a week. He was going
bald when he was a teenager which amplified his already reclusive character traits. He came to spotlight by
his dedication and hard work: ‘I don’t know if I’m smarter than anyone else,’ he would later tell Frederick
Joseph, CEO of Drexel Burnham Lambert, ‘but I can work 25% harder.’ Though his cells determined to
shut down his ways of making goals did not. He created the Prostate Cancer Foundation soon after his
diagnosis. Talk about willpower, he was able to raise more than $660 million dollars and provide funding to
more than 2000 research projects.

A phenomenal personality, not even slowed down by cancer itself. Opening a charitable cancer foundation
because he got the cancer is what a personality of Milken defines. This man literally was brought down to
hell from his heaven and was able to plunge his way back. Knowledge Universe (KU) now renamed as
kinder care is known as one of the largest private provider of early childhood education in America is an
organization he founded after he grew interest in $800 billion educational-services industry.

A person with Machiavellians character. A person with this level of accomplishment is often seen to be a
narcissist but when he talks about legacy as not a man curing cancer, revolutionizing capital nor education
but a “Loving Father”. Despite his tenure in jail, which is the topic of controversy. I think of this man in
high regards.