Ivan Frederick Boesky was a U.S. investment banker whose manipulation of the securities market through insider trading led to a criminal conviction and imprisonment in the 1980s. Boesky, who had promoted speculation in stocks through the use of arbitrage, cooperated with federal prosecutors and provided the names of others involved in insider trading, including Michael Milken, another famous securities dealer.

Boesky was born on March 6, 1937, in Detroit, Michigan, the child of Russian immigrants. After graduating from the Detroit College of Law in 1964 and then clerking for a federal district court judge, Boesky joined a prominent national accounting firm in 1965. The following year he left Detroit for New York City, where he became a security analyst. By the early 1970s he had become a general partner of a securities firm yet he wanted to start his own firm. This happened in 1975 when he formed Ivan Boesky and Company...