Kevin Ingram (bond trader)

Kevin Ingram is an American bond trader, investment banker, and businessman.

He graduated in 1980, and accepted a Western Electric scholarship to study engineering at Stanford University.

CMOs began during the 1980s when the mortgage market was in an economic boom.

However, because of uncertainty in case a loan cannot be paid off, mortgage investors began developing CMOs by dividing loan and interest payments into new financial securities.

Reliant on the collateral pool of mortgage borrowers, these new securities each carry their own different risk equation.

In June 1981, Ingram left Stanford to work as an engineer.

Meanwhile, in February 1982, Ingram was arrested in Sacramento, California, for passing bad checks and committing misdemeanor property theft.

Ingram spent five weekends in prison and was placed on a two-year probation.

In September 1982, Ingram enrolled into Stanford's Graduate School of Business after learning from a college friend that Wall Street was interested in hiring math-proficient college students.

He graduated in 1984.

Ingram started working at Lehman Brothers as an associate.

A week after he started, Lehman was acquired by Shearson/American Express and went public.

Determined to remain involved in finance, Ingram moved to Goldman Sachs one year later.

In 1988, Ingram was promoted to vice president, and in 1992, he headed the collateralized mortgage obligation (CMO) derivatives trading desk, supervising several junior bond traders.

In 1992 and 1996, he was included as among the top 25 most successful Black Wall Street executives on Black Enterprise.

In 1994, Ingram had hoped to become a partner within the firm, thereby garnering an ownership share.

However, his promotion was placed on hold, but during the same year, Steven Mnuchin was made partner as his father had worked as an executive at Goldman Sachs.

Bitter over Mnuchin's promotion, Ingram told a colleague: "I guess I'm not the chosen one."

By this point, his coworkers began noticing he was taking extended, unexplained absences from the office.

In 1996, he was again passed over to become a partner, and subsequently resigned from Goldman Sachs.

In one of his final emails there, he issued one questioning the firm's perception of itself as an elite meritocracy.

In April 1996, Ingram was hired by Edson Mitchell to join Deutsche Morgan Grenfell.

To help increase the bank's market share in commercial mortgage-backed securities, Ingram served as the Managing Director over the department.

His responsibilities were to structure and issue millions in securities lending for an international clientele including banks, insurance companies, and private individuals with a high net worth.

To help build the department, Ingram hired several former colleagues from Goldman Sachs, along with several veteran real estate finance personnel.

By October 1996, Black Enterprise reported Ingram had invested $500 million for Fannie Mae and $100 million for Host Marriott, reportedly the first ever for a hotel company.

In 1998, then-businessman Donald Trump had called Ingram's colleague Mike Offit requesting a $125 million loan to renovate 40 Wall Street.

Ingram then met with Trump at his office to negotiate the loan; while Ingram had personally opposed the loan, the transaction was made in April 1998.

A few months later, Trump won another $300 million loan to construct Trump World Tower.

By January 1998, Ingram had run a large derivatives loss, and the bank was forced to take a significant write-down.

Nevertheless, in August 1998, Ingram was promoted to head the bank's global asset securitization department in London.

In September, the ongoing Russian financial crisis and the fallout from the Long-Term Capital Management had caused a severe market downturn.

In the wake of this, Ingram's department had suffered substantial trading losses.

In 2001, he pled guilty to one count of money laundering in a case related to an arms-trafficking sting, launched by Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).

He was sentenced to 18 months in prison and fined a penalty of $185,000.

Ingram was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Nathan Ingram, a former United States Army veteran and real estate appraiser and investor, and Doris Ingram, a volunteer nurse.

When Ingram was five years old, his father died from suicide.

Following his father's death, his mother took over the family's real estate business.

Ingram attended Central High School, becoming a math prodigy.

He later attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he majored in chemical engineering.