This is the comprehensive story of Texas International Inc., a small domestic oil and gas company that needed new capital resources for growth. It turned to Drexel Burnham Lambert and Michael Milken who engineered the first junk bond issue for this company at high interest rates. The book records the unusual events that befell the company, through its corporate growth and decline, debt exchange offers, bankruptcy, and corporate rebirth as (fittingly named?) The Phoenix Resources Companies, Inc.

Readers will find interesting background on the oil and gas industry, as well as discussion of the financial wheeling and dealing that set the precedent for corporate financial innovations in the 1980's.

This book offers a valuable innovation of modern corporate finance in the form of a model to predict bankruptcy. Students, scholars, trade market businessmen - all who are interested in the 1990 financial issues including bankruptcy, exchange offers, and corporate reorganization will find Harlan Platt's The First Junk Bond an illuminating case study.