UPDATE 1-Ivan Boesky, convict in 1980s insider trading scandal, dies at 87, NYT reports

(Adds background on Boesky in paragraphs 3-5 and 8-10)

May 20 (Reuters) – 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 at his peak considered a genius at risk arbitrage – the business of speculating in takeover stocks, and his wealth was estimated at $280 million.

“I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself,” he said in a commencement speech to the business school at the University of California Berkeley in 1986.

Just a few months later, the man known on Wall Street as “Ivan the Terrible” was indicted on the charges that would send him to disgrace, near-bankruptcy and prison.

Boesky became a legend by committing vast sums of money to potential merger deals, trying to take advantage of the small but predictable gains that follow takeover rumors.

But the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission proved he obtained tips from investment bankers about deals in the works and used them illegally before the information was released to the public.

He won leniency by cooperating in the government’s investigation of insider trading rings and reportedly taped conversations with his business contacts.

He was born on March 6, 1937, and grew up in Detroit, where his parents owned restaurants. He said later that at age 13 he bought a truck and drove it without a license to the city’s parks, where he sold ice cream.

He received a degree from the Detroit College of Law and worked as a law clerk to a U.S. District Court judge before joining the accounting firm Touche Ross.

Boesky moved to Wall Street in 1966, where he joined L.F. Rothschild as a securities analyst. In 1975, with $700,000 in capital bankrolled by his wife’s family, he established his own firm specializing in risk arbitrage.

The death was confirmed to the New York Times by Boesky’s daughter, Marianne Boesky. (Reporting by Niket Nishant in Bengaluru; Editing by Diane Craft and Shailesh Kuber)

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