Business Notes INVESTMENT BANKING

"In the highest civilization," wrote Emerson, "the book is still the highest delight." Well, not for Michael Milken, particularly since he is the book's subject. The controversial junk-bond financier reportedly offered to pay Writer Connie Bruck to give up work on her book about him and his investment firm, Drexel Burnham Lambert. "I do not want it to be done. Why don't we pay you for all the copies you would have sold -- if you had written it," Milken suggested to Bruck after she began working on the project in 1986, according to an extract of the manuscript obtained by the Washington Post. The book, titled The Predators Ball after the nickname for Drexel's , annual junk-bond convention, is scheduled for publication in June. While Drexel does not deny that Milken made the offer, a spokesman maintains that "we never tried to hinder the book from being written."