I had been wanting to
read The Billionaire’s Apprentice for quite a long time. Like many
others, I, too, was shocked when the news of Rajat Gupta’s
conviction in insider trading was announced by a US Court. What only
added fuel to the fire was the fact that two Indian immigrants Preet
Bharara and Sanjay Wadhwa were behind the conviction.
This is the first book on
an insider trading case written with the aid of nearly fifty
wiretapped calls. The author Anita Raghavan takes us behind the
scenes of the entire insider trading saga – right from the
childhood days of Rajat Gupta in Kolkata and New Delhi to his initial
days at Harvard and his entry into McKinsey. His success as indicated
by him being appointed the managing director of McKinsey three times
is juxtaposed with his eventual fall when he fell prey to Raj
Rajaratnam’s sneaky association.
As the book tells us,
Rajat Gupta was quite a hotshot guy – he was close to Mukesh
Ambani, head of Reliance Industries and was one of the few Indian
executives who could get Dr. Manmohan Singh on the phone at short
notice.
The book mentions the
insider trading case in great detail including the various persons
involved, their modus operandi, the rise and fall of tech industry
and their stocks. The way the prosecution went about building the
case going through tons of documents to piece together the evidence
makes for interesting reading, especially for financial junkies like
me.
September 23, 2008 turned
out to be a red letter day for Rajat Gupta for that was the day the
Goldman Sachs had its board meeting information about which was
passed on by Gupta to Rajaratnam just before the stock markets
closed. While we may wonder what led Gupta to keep on passing
sensitive information, as respected and wealthy as he was, his
actions may be explained perhaps by his quote during his speech at
Columbia University in April-2004, “I think money is very
seductive. However much you say you will not fall into the trap of
it, you do fall into the trap of it.”
The details of the trial
are also quite interesting with the author bringing out Gupta's
humane side and his family's reactions quite skillfully. According to
Bharara, his rationale behind going after people involved in insider
trading was that, “People with lots of money were trying to game
the system.” Judge Rakoff disallowed testimony on Gupta's
philanthropic plans, saying, “The annals of white-collar crime in
this district are filled with people who wanted to make themselves
respected, powerful members of society by giving to charity.”
The book is a must-read
for those who are interested in reading about financial white-collar
crimes. It is also a must-read to understand what made a person like
Rajat Gupta, probably one of the most revered and influential
Indian-Americans in the world, indulge in insider trading. When
Rajaratnam was convicted, you do not feel bad or surprised because
his persona was such. But Gupta exuded a different personality and,
thus, his conviction affected everybody. The book stays with you long
after you have finished reading it; I went on to read much more about
the case and Gupta.
Random snippets I found
interesting in the book about Rajat Gupta :)
Rajat Gupta's wife
Anita Mattoo was the only girl in a graduating class of 250 at
IIT-Delhi in 1968.
Subramanian Swamy, a
well-known Indian politician, taught Rajat Gupta economics at
IIT-Delhi
Rajat Gupta was one
of the youngest members of the Harvard Business School class of 1973
and one of three from India.
Random snippets I found
interesting in the book that have absolutely nothing to do with Rajat
Gupta :)
Golf arrived in
Calcutta in 1829, some sixty years before it reached New York.
Governor-General
William Bentinck introduced English as the official language for
Indian higher education, a move that would have momentous
consequences a hundred years later.
Narayana Murthy's
son could not get into IIT to study computer science so he had to go
to his safety school, Cornell University.
McKinsey has its
roots in a company founded in 1926 by James O. McKinsey, a certified
public accountant and University of Chicago professor.
References to literature
in the book:
Rajat Gupta's most
remembered drama performance at IIT-Delhi was his role in Jean-Paul
Sartre's searing existential drama Men Without Shadows.
Rajat and his wife
Anita acted together in a Hindi adaptation of the Moliere play The
Miser.
On his study table at
Harvard, Gupta kept a tattered piece of paper which read, “But I
have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep – Robert
Frost.”
The Guptas named
their first daughter Geetanjali after the Nobel Prize-winning epic
written by the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore.
Anita Raghavan's
mother came to the United States in 1959 for an internship at the
Brooklyn Public Library.
Additional reading for
those interested :)
Note: I was given a review copy of this book by the publisher Hachette India.
