The Billionaire's Apprentice
The Rise of The Indian-American Elite and The Fall of The Galleon Hedge Fund
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- $24.99
Publisher Description
A revealing history of Indian-Americans' rise through the ranks in business, from immigrants to powerbrokers.
The collapse of the Galleon Group—a hedge fund that managed more than seven billion dollars in assets—from criminal charges of insider trading was a sensational case that pitted prosecutor Preet Bharara, himself the son of Indian immigrants, against the best and brightest of the South Asian business community. At the center of the case was self-described King of Kings, Galleon's founder Raj Rajaratnam, a Sri-Lankan-born, Wharton-educated billionaire.
But the most shocking allegation was that the éminence grise of Indian business, Rajat Gupta, was Rajaratnam's accomplice and mole. If not for Gupta's nose-to-the-grindstone rise to head up McKinsey & Co and a position on the Goldman Sachs board, men like Rajaratnam would have never made it to the top of America's moneyed elite.
Author Anita Raghavan criss-crosses the globe from Wall Street boardrooms to Delhi's Indian Institute of Technology as she uncovers the secrets of this subculture—an incredible tale of triumph, temptation and tragedy.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Enron, Lehman Brothers, Bernie Madoff it's clear that corruption and venality are de rigueur at the highest ranks of the financial services industry. Financial journalist Raghavan knows this as well as anyone, making her exhaustive account of the self-destruction of Raj Rajaratnam and Rajat Gupta all the more confusing. Though the narrative is fast-paced, the point of the book is uncertain. The utter ubiquity of Gupta's misbehavior at the Galleon Group, spectacularly expensive to the company as it was, does not make his story particularly remarkable. Ostensibly about the integration of Indian immigrants into the upper echelons of American society, the book barely mentions that topic, and the nationality of Rajaratnam (Sri Lankan, not Indian), Gupta, and their associates seems an extraneous detail. By focusing on the unsurprising chummy backscratching, avaricious dealing, and boundless sense of entitlement in this world, Raghavan barrels past promising side roads. For example, the fact that "a previous insider trading accusation into Rajaratnam was squashed because a criminal probe into his possible involvement with a Tamil insurgent group had taken precedence" is treated as an unfortunate distraction.
