Welcome to Michael Milken's living room: a fire marshal's nightmare crammed full of people who have money or power, want money or power, or are willing to pay several thousand dollars to be near any and all of the above.
At least 3,000 people are packed into this week's high-powered salon, which is not actually being held in Milken's Encino home (too small) but at his longtime haunt, the Beverly Hilton. They have come to hobnob with the junk-bond-king-turned-philanthropist and hear the musings of his marquee friends, people with names such as Murdoch, Pickens, Turner and Broad. (As in Rupert, T. Boone, Ted and Eli.)
Don't bother asking. It's sold out.
Not so a decade ago. When the Milken Institute Global Conference debuted in 1998, the world was reeling from the meltdown of Asia's financial markets, and organizers struggled to fill the seats while fretting that they could attract only financiers and policy wonks. Milken, the 1980s Wall Street wizard whose creative financing revolutionized financial markets but landed him in prison for securities fraud, had regained his freedom just five years before.
Today that's old news. The event has grown into a confab of Hollywood heavyweights and political and academic stars -- even the occasional Olympian. Milken sets the agenda, and it's an eclectic one, from the future of K-12 education to the future of prostate cancer treatment to the future of capitalism. (Luckily for the high-net-worth gathering, the conclusion of Monday's panel of three Nobel laureates in economics was that the free-market system had one.)
Think the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, without the skiing and antiglobalization protesters and with better shopping. (Which is why some have dubbed this Davos West.) Or the Clinton Global Initiative without the presidential invitation and the $15,000 annual membership fee.
There are a few echoes of the past: The four-day conference is held at the same hotel where Milken in the 1980s presided over what became known as the Predators' Ball -- a gathering of corporate takeover artists who used his high-yield junk bonds to finance their hostile bids. And the predominant attire is still the Wall Street power suit -- dark and tailored, shirt preferably white or light blue (all the better for that hallway interview with Bloomberg Television or face time with CNBC anchor Maria Bartiromo).
But the conference is about expanding minds as well as wallets.
