| It all starts with the dog-sniffing. That's the best way to describe what happens when hundreds of Wall Street's so-called masters of the universe gather at Beverly Cañon Gardens in Los Angeles for the opening reception of the Milken Institute's annual Global Conference. For about two hours late Sunday afternoon, this crowd of mostly middle-aged men sized up one another like debutantes at a society ball. Even among friends, it's a competition. What you're wearing, where you're staying and, most important of all, whose high-powered dinner you're attending that night determine the pecking order. Thus begins the event that's probably the single greatest concentration of investment capital anywhere on the planet, a who's who of private equity, private credit, real estate, venture, infrastructure and hedge fund managers, plus the pension plans, endowments and sovereign wealth funds they serve as clients. Some 4,500 attendees cram the narrow corridors of the Beverly Hilton hotel for three days of panel discussions, one-on-one interviews with the likes of Elon Musk and, of course, endless networking.  Musk took the stage Monday, but money is the true star of the event. Photographer: Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images There's so much money here and, with it, influence that "Milken," as the conference is universally known, has become a must-attend event for a growing list of people outside of finance: policymakers, regulators, activists and more. Eva Maydell, a Bulgarian member of the European Parliament and key architect of its landmark legislation on semiconductors and artificial intelligence, told me she came to Milken for the first time in part to escape her "Brussels bubble." Mostly, though, she hopes to build relationships that might help bring home the capital and talent Europe needs to maintain its high standard of living and expansive social safety net. "It's important for people to know that there are representatives from European institutions who are interested not in putting regulatory borders around Europe but in collaborating with the US," Maydell said. "To sustain our way of life and continue to be such an attractive place, we need to have a strategic view on how to invest and how to grow our industries." Bill Browder is another Milken newbie. He's the former hedge fund manager who wrote Red Notice, the 2015 bestseller about his experiences battling the Russian government. Browder, a regular participant at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, came to LA to advance his agenda. "I heard from a lot of people that the decline of Davos was being made up for by the ascendancy of Milken," he said. Now that WEF admission is so expensive, "Davos ends up being this really generic crowd of major accounting firms and banks, not iconoclastic entrepreneurs and fascinating business leaders." Browder's main objective is persuading the powerful people he meets here to support the multilateral effort, now backed by the European Union, to fund Ukraine's war effort with Russian central bank assets held in the West. "You have all the money men and women here, and there was some argument that somehow this would upset the world order. I'm trying to convince everyone that's not the case." Milken the conference–and Michael Milken the man–makes no apologies for being about the money. In many respects, the event, in its 27th year, is a celebration of finance and free markets. And it's become such a fixture that even Blackstone Inc., the world's largest alternative asset manager, is here in force as a sponsor. "It's not just the capital, it's where the capital is being allocated," said Joe Baratta, the global head of private equity at Blackstone. "That's most interesting." In November, as a Shoprite Holdings Ltd. store in a working-class area of Cape Town prepared to open, gunmen stormed in, held staff members hostage and then escaped with cigarettes and cash—the umpteenth such violent robbery for Africa's biggest retailer. In February an executive of Rand Water, addressing a group of schoolchildren on the outskirts of Johannesburg, was shot dead by an armed man firing at close range. An up-and-coming soccer star was gunned down in April in a carjacking near Johannesburg. The African continent's most developed nation has long been saddled by one of the highest crime rates in the world. The number of murders was just under 27,500 last year, up about one-third from 2019. The World Bank estimates that criminal activity shaves a whopping 10%, or $40 billion a year, from the gross domestic product. The brazenness and violence of attacks has intensified to such a point that crime has become a major issue in what promises to be South Africa's tightest election since the end of apartheid, with the ruling African National Congress likely to be forced into a coalition government for the first time. A survey by Ipsos released on April 26 put ANC support at 40.2%, well below the 57.5% of the vote the party won in the 2019 election. Antony Sguazzin and Janice Kew write about the insecurity and corruption weighing on the May 29 election: Crime and Its $40 Billion Hit to the Economy Are at the Heart of South Africa's Vote | 
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