Michael Milken

How a random phone call about Milken launched Marks into high yield

In 1978 Marks was underused in Citibank's bond department when his boss asked if he could figure out the high-yield bonds a guy named Milken was dealing in. Marks calls it pure luck: had he been at lunch, someone else might have taken the call and his career.

“And he says, there's a guy named Milken or something in California, and he deals in something called high-yield bonds. Do you think you can figure out what that means? That was just luck. If you read Malcolm Gladwell and Outliers, it was just luck. Right time, right place. And if that call came at lunchtime and I had been out at lunch, maybe somebody else would get the call and they'd be me.”