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Ivan Boesky, whose knifelike face and sharkish toothy smile indicate that he's not the sort that misses much, professes not to understand one thing. what all the fuss is about.
"We are not predatory," says the president of Wall St.'s Ivan F. Boesky Corp. and the generally acknowledged king of the new breed of arbitrageurs. "We don't ever do unfriendly takeovers. We aren't some breed of mysterious chameleon affecting world events. There is nothing unholy or unwholesome about arbitrage."
Still, to CEOs and executive vice presidents all across the public corporate landscape, Boesky is one of the principal villains in a rogues' gallery of takeover artists, green-mailers, and the money men and women behind them. With the unprecedented friendly and unfriendly merger surge now two years old, Boesky and other arbitrageurs have stepped front and center.
Recalling the upshot of the Getty Oil/Texaco deal, Boesky wrote, "Arbitrage had arrived. It was as much a part of Wall Street as the mutual fund and the stock trader. And it deserved a book."
Which Boesky has now helpfully supplied. He was in town...