Ivan Boesky, Wall Street financier who coined ‘greed is good’, dies aged 87

Known as ‘Ivan The Terrible’, the risk arbitrage maven fell from glory in one of the biggest insider trading scandals of the 1980s

Ivan Boesky, the financier who gave birth to the “greed is good” mantra before going to prison in one of the biggest Wall Street insider trading scandals of the 1980s, has died at the age of 87, the New York Times reported on Monday.

Boesky, who partly inspired the Gordon Gekko character in the 1987 movie Wall Street, was considered a genius at risk arbitrage – the business of speculating in takeover stocks – and his wealth was estimated at $280m.