On Drexel Burnham Lambert and dirty deeds...

The names Drexel Burnham Lambert and Michael Milken evokes memories from the market excesses from the 1980s, with cheap money from junk bonds.

As I lived through those days when I first started out, DBL reminds me of something a little bit more personal.

I was with Lehman Brothers at the time, and my boss has a good friend from college who was with DBL. One late evening when the two of them dropped in, apparently on the pretense by my boss showing his friend around his office and stuffs. His friend threw his bag on one side. A short while later, my boss ran back in his office and back out to me, handing me a rather thick document and asked me to make a copy for him. I did so for him, but while I was copying, I realized that it's a confidential document on a company that must have been a client of DBL that his friend was handling, and that my boss stole it from his friend, no doubt with the intention of stealing the client from DBL (and his friend).

Although I did it for my boss, I looked him in the eye when I gave him back the original and the copy. I held his eyes long enough to make sure he knew I knew what he did, and my look didn't condone the action.

My boss is a good and kind man. But somehow career ambition gets the better of him, and he did what he did. While I understand why he did it, I can't say I was proud of him. Ever since then, every time I looked at my boss, he would have this embarrassed look on him that he found it difficult meeting my eyes.

Not too long after that, I left Lehman for further studies. Oftentimes, I have secret hopes that my boss would win, without having to resolve to dirty deeds. Given that I'm in business long enough now, I am not as naive to believe that such things will and should not happen. Still, I would hold out my hope.

It's like hoping the athletes competing in the Olympics would not take body enhancing drugs or gears like Nike performance-enhancing suits in swimming that helps shattering records, compared to decade-long records held by Spitz. But once that kind of "performance enhancement" becomes standards, there is almost no turning back. And that is very sad.