University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School Penn Law: Legal Scholarship Repository Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law 2013 A Transactional Genealogy of Scandal: From Michael Milken to Enron to Goldman Sachs William W. Bratton University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School Adam J. Levitin Georgetown University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/faculty_scholarship Part of the Accounting Commons, Accounting Law Commons, Business Administration, Management, and Operations Commons, Business Law, Public Responsibility, and Ethics Commons, Business Organizations Law Commons, Corporate Finance Commons, Law and Economics Commons, and the Securities Law Commons Repository Citation Bratton, William W. and Levitin, Adam J., "A Transactional Genealogy of Scandal: From Michael Milken to Enron to Goldman Sachs" (2013). Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law. 1515. https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/faculty_scholarship/1515 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Penn Law: Legal Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law by an authorized administrator of Penn Law: Legal Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. A TRANSACTIONAL GENEALOGY OF SCANDAL: FROM MICHAEL MILKEN TO ENRON TO GOLDMAN SACHS WILLIAM W. BRATTON* ADAM J. LEVITIN† ABSTRACT Three scandals have reshaped business regulation over the past thirty years: the securities fraud prosecution of Michael Milken in 1988, the Enron implosion of 2001, and the Goldman Sachs “ABACUS” enforcement action of 2010. The scandals have always been seen as unrelated. This Article highlights a previously unnoticed transactional affinity tying these scandals together—a deal structure known as the synthetic collateralized debt obligation involving the use of a special purpose entity (“SPE”).