Bruxelles Lambert. The firm was renamed Drexel Burnham Lambert, and incorporated that year after 41 years as a limited partnership. The enlarged firm was privately held; Lambert held a 26 percent stake and received six seats on the board of directors. Most of the remaining 74 percent was held by employees. Burnham remained the enlarged firm's chairman. He handed the posts of president and CEO to Robert Linton, who had begun at Burnham and Company in 1945 as a stock certificate runner. Burnham handed the chairmanship to Linton as well in 1982. Business Drexel's legacy as an advisor to both startup companies and fallen angels remains an industry model today. While Michael Milken (a holdover from the old Drexel) got most of the credit by almost single-handedly creating a junk bond market, another key architect in this strategy was Fred Joseph. Shortly after buying the old Drexel, Burnham found out that Joseph, chief operating officer of Shearson Hamill, wanted to get back into the nuts and bolts of investment banking and hired him as co-head of corporate finance. Joseph, the son of a Boston taxicab driver, promised Burnham that in 10 years, he would make Drexel Burnham as powerful as Goldman Sachs. Joseph's prophecy proved accurate. The firm rose from the bottom of the pack to compete with and even top the Wall Street Bulge Bracket firms. While Milken was clearly the most powerful man in the firm (to the point that a business consultant warned Drexel that it was a "one-product company"), it was Joseph who succeeded Linton as president in 1984, adding the post of CEO in 1985. Drexel, however, was more aggressive in its business practices than most. When it entered the mergers and acquisitions field in the early 1980s, it did not shy away from backing hostile takeovers—long a taboo among the established firms. Its specialty was the "highly confident letter", in which it promised it could get the necessary financing for a hostile takeover. Although it had no legal status, Drexel's reputation for making markets for any bonds it underwrote was such that a "highly confident letter" was as good as cash to many of the corporate raiders of the 1980s. Among the deals it financed during this time were T. Boone Pickens' failed runs at Gulf Oil and Unocal, Carl Icahn's bid for Phillips 66, Ted Turner's buyout of MGM/UA, and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts