Drexel Burnham Lambert was an American investment bank that collapsed in 1990. Under Michael Milken, the firm's great innovation was introducing risky borrowers to bond markets; its junk bonds fuelled private equity's leveraged-buy-out boom during the 1980s.
Drexel was to today's Wall Street what PayPal was to Silicon Valley: an incubator for young operators who went on to shape an industry. Its alumni founded Apollo, Ares and Cerberus, and firms that later became the private credit divisions of Bain Capital and Blackstone.
There was a new library in the Civic Centre. It was so new it didn't even have librarians. It had Assistant Information Officers.