The Eighties, everyone agreed, were a Bad Time.Just as people were figuring out that one, they learned that America’s most prominent financier had broken the securities laws Few actually knew what these laws were; fewer cared. I’ve never really understood the public attitude towards Michael Milken, or what exactly is to be gained by keeping him out of finance for the rest of his life.In retrospect, the draconian punishment seems to be a case of spectacularly bad timing on Milken’s part. The mere suggestion that by helping Murdoch he had violated this agreement led Milken last month to pay the US government $47m in reparations – or go directly back to jail.He’s the man who knows more about money than anyone on the planet, yet anytime he’s caught talking about money it costs him a fortune. His settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission at the end of his junk bond career barred him for life from the securities business. Of all the financiers in America, Milken is still the most highly valued by the people who know.But of all the prominent financiers in America, Milken is the only one who is forbidden from practising finance. Ted Turner paid Milken $50m to coach him through the sale of Turner Broadcasting System to Time Warner. Rupert Murdoch paid Milken $42m to sit in on his meetings with MCI Communications, which was looking to invest in Murdoch’s global media empire.People who did business with Milken before he went to jail still want to do business with Milken now that he is out of jail.

If you had a choice of hearing the views of a Nobel Prize-winning economist or Michael Milken, which would you choose?A lot of people who have their pick of financial advisers feel the same way. Of all the important people who spoke at the conference – the topic was the world economy, no less – the man who received the most attention was Milken himself.
His pronouncements about the need for Asia to democratise capital found their way into newspapers across the US And no wonder. Most recently, Milken hosted a high-profile conference that drew prominent businessmen and a gaggle of Nobel Prize-winning economists. EVERY now and then Michael Milken’s name pops up in the news and a wave of nostalgia washes over the bond market cognoscenti.

But it also showed that few people had heard of the paper, while those who knew it “want to feel that we address their concerns from their American perspective”, said Mr Arnold.But unless the FT can rapidly achieve a critical circulation mass, it faces the prospect of a large investment sinkhole which would test Ms Scardino’s commitment and the depth of Pearson’s pockets at a time when other, larger media titans are also trying to expand their international franchises And if it doesn’t make it, will Ms Scardino pull the plug?. It showed that the market, although still under 1 million, is bigger than previously thought. Trucks, less susceptible to bad weather, will distribute the paper throughout the Midwest. At the end of 1998, FT managers hope to open a fourth site in Miami or Boston.A recent study threw up good and bad news for the FT. The FT covers Europe with seven printing and distribution locations: in the US it has only two, one on each coast.In May, the FT will begin printing at a Chicago plant. In many parts of America, the paper arrives a day late or not at all. “Our challenge,” he says, “is getting people to give us 20 minutes a day.”Beyond marketing, the largest expense for the FT is distribution.