When Fred Joseph came on board Drexel Burnham Lambert back in the mid 1970s, the firm was fairly small. But he met a young trader at the firm he considered to be brilliant: Mike Milken. Yes, this was the beginning of a major transformation on Wall Street, which would lead to the decade of deals during the 1980s.

Unfortunately, over the weekend, Joseph died. He was 72.

A Harvard MBA, Joseph got his first break on Wall Street when he joined E.F. Hutton in 1963. Seven years later, he moved over to Shearson Hammill and and eventually became the chief operating officer.

This post is part of a series on some of the most memorable companies that have disappeared.

Drexel Burnham Lambert (1935 - 1990) spent its last decade accumulating money and power. The key was junk bond impresario Mike Milken, who used to take the bus back and forth to classes at Wharton and came in to school before dawn with a miner's hat on his head whose bright light helped him read annual reports.

Drexel's driving force, Milken, realized the potential of our shared management professor at Wharton. That professor predicted that Milken would either make a huge amount of money or go to jail. He did both. Milken made money by selling junk bonds to takeover artists who threatened companies by buying up their shares and proposing to throw out their managers. In many cases the companies bought out the takeover artist's shares at a premium to make them go away.

Milken was feared by the business establishment, and he had a contempt for the law. So he did himself in -- eventually agreeing to pay $650 million in fines and plead nolo contendere to six felonies -- three counts of stock parking and three counts of stock manipulation. Milken went to jail from March 1991 until January 1993. Drexel hemorrhaged capital; fired 5,000 people; and eventually filed for bankruptcy in 1990.

The lesson? If you can't achieve wealth within the law, you will pay the price.

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter.

Let us know in the comments what you remember about Drexel. And be sure to check out other Companies That Have Vanished.