Bennett Goodman |
Bennett Goodman owes his success over the past few years to his wife. He used to be a leveraged buyout banker at Drexel Burnham Lambert, and wanted to move into capital markets. ?The only place to do that at Drexel was in the Beverly Hills office,? says Goodman. ?So I told my wife that Mike [Milken] wanted me to move over there.?
The response was unequivocal: ?She said that my family and her family were in New York, so if I really wanted to get into capital markets I should look there first.?
That?s how Goodman found his way to Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette. ?I?d heard of them before, as a few people I knew and respected from business school had gone there and set up a bridge fund,? he says. They needed to tap the high-yield bond market, so Goodman embarked on a campaign to persuade the bank to hire him. ?I tried to get Garret Moran to give me a job,? says Goodman. ?At first he wouldn?t see me, so I stalked him, and finally got him to come out for lunch.