Selling Junk

The term junk bonds conjures up an image of useless certificates sitting in a pile in someone's garage. Nonetheless, junk bonds, which originally were issued mostly by companies in financial trouble, have taken on a slick new role as a money-raising device for corporate-takeover artists and entrepreneurial companies. The amount of junk-bond issues has grown from $3 billion in 1982 to $14.3 billion last year. &

The proliferation of the paper, though, is causing both moneymen and legislators to wonder whether the junk pile could collapse. Last week New Mexico Republican Pete Domenici introduced a Senate bill that would halt the feverish growth by putting a moratorium until the end of the year on most takeovers financed by junk bonds. The bill could put a stop to deals like Corporate Raider T. Boone Pickens' plan to acquire Unocal with some $3 billion in junk bonds, one of the largest issues ever proposed.

The deal maker behind Pickens and most other corporate sharks is the investment firm Drexel Burnham Lambert, which controls nearly 75% of the junk- bond market. Drexel's Michael Milken, 39, developed today's market in junk bonds almost single-handed after researching them in 1969 as an M.B.A. student at Wharton School. Milken showed that junk bonds defaulted only slightly more often than prestige certificates, yet paid interest rates 3% to 4% higher. During the late 1970s, he patiently persuaded such big investors as pension funds and banks that the bonds were safe, and Drexel began issuing mounds of them. Milken's control of junk bonds is so complete that in 1978, when he moved back to his native California and began working out of Beverly Hills, much of his clientele moved with him. Last year Milken earned an estimated $15 million.

Critics charge that today's euphoria in the junk-bond market could be shattered by even one major default. Says Preston Martin, vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board: "The market has not been tested by some significant negative surprises, which inevitably will come at some point." A default would probably cause no substantial damage to pension funds and other large, sophisticated investors, which generally keep only a small part of their portfolio in such certificates. But federal regulators are concerned about the increasing amount of junk-bond investing by banks and by savings and loans. Says Norman Raiden, chief counsel of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board: "Junk bonds are likely to be most attractive to distressed institutions that need high yields." As a result, the Domenici bill would forbid banks and savings and loans to buy any junk bonds at all.