NEW YORK — Fred Joseph, who as CEO of investment bank Drexel Burnham Lambert helped create the modern junk-bond market in the 1980s before the firm's collapse, died Friday at age 72.

Joseph died at New York Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center after a long fight with multiple myeloma. His death was announced by John F. Sorte, CEO of Morgan Joseph & Co., an investment bank Joseph helped found.

Joseph, a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Business School, arrived on Wall Street in 1963, joining the corporate finance department of E.F. Hutton.