Ivan Boesky, the infamous inside trader who at least partially inspired the fictional character Gordon Gekko in the 1987 film Wall Street , died on Monday, his daughter confirmed. He was 87. Marianne Boesky told CNN her father died in his sleep, but did not share additional details about his cause of death.
In an Instagram post , she called him a “dedicated and loving father above all else.” Boesky’s name became synonymous with financial greed in the 1980s, when, after making hundreds of millions by working on Wall Street , he told business school graduates University of California, Berkeley, that “greed is healthy.” “Greed is all right, by the way,” he said, which inspired a similar speech in Wall Street .
“I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself.” It was his own self-pronounced greed that earned him the moniker “Ivan the Terrible”on a 1986 Time Magazine cover, and led to his downfall as one of Wall Street’s titans.
The Dec. 1, 1986, edition of Time. Time Boesky cashed in on the corporate takeover boom in the 1980s, using insider information—which he paid top dollar to receive—to cash in on pending deals before they were publicly announced.
By the time investigators caught on to his trading practices, Boesky was among the richest men on Wall Street, amassing a personal net worth as high as $280 million (about $818 million in today’s currency) and a trading portfolio valued at $3 billion (about $8.7 billion .
