Book Reviews : Roman Tomasic and Stephen BottomleyY, Directing the Top 500. St Leonards (Australia): Allen and Unwin, 1993
Abstract
Book ReviewsRoman Tomasic and Stephen BottomleyY, Directing the Top 500. St Leonards (Australia): Allen and Unwin, 1993 SAGE Publications, Inc.1995DOI: 10.1177/096466399500400313 David Campbell School of Financial Studies and Law, Sheffield Hallam University, UK The 1980s are now viewed as a period of burgeoning corporate crime in the US, but Michael Milken's treatment was disappointingly familiar to those concerned with the prevention of corporate executives' and advisors' misconduct. First, entirely predictably, Milken received a trivial punishment in proportion to his offences.' Second, those offences are predominantly viewed as hzs. The enormity of Milken's practices are taken to be a warrant for treating them as unusual, with the also entirely predictable consequence that their wider ramifications are barely explored. Connie Bruck, for example, had to overcome unscrupulous opposition to make public the disgraceful details, but she viewed Milken's prosecution as a 'tragedy ... poignant ... sorry, bitter', for she saw him in an ambivalent light: ... the government had won. It was the right outcome, for in this writer's view Milken had to be stopped. But this was no straightforward morality play of good and evil. Milken had been dangerous, but he had also been one of the most imaginative,