Hachette India Local The Billionaire's Apprentice: The Rise Of The Indian-American Elite And The Fall Of The Galleon Hedge Fund [Paperback] [Jan 01, 2013] Raghavan, Anita Paperback – 7 Mar. 2013

Great Journalism and a fantastic readExceptional book, well written, meticulously researched, gripping from the start and reads like a financial thriller.Anita Raghavan has written a fascinating twists and turns window into the world of consulting, hedge funds, insider trading and the investigative determination of the SEC/FBI.A helpful cast of characters is given at the beginning, followed by seamless weaving of the two detailed contrasting stories of the main protagonists Rajat Gupta and Raj Rajaratnam taking the reader on a journey from Mumbai and Kolkata, revealing family stories, background and more. The reader is then transported to the USA, another world entirely. Once started, I just could not put this book down!NB. I'm not an Indian-American just someone who appreciates an interesting and well written story.

One of those books that will define a period."Barbarians" summed up the junk bond era (and remains my favorite business book ever), "When Genius Failed" summed up the bondarb era. A movie (Startup.com) actually summed up the Internet era. "The Smartest Guys in the Room" (which, shame on me, I've yet to read) summed up the creative accounting era.While we're waiting for somebody more focused and less confused than David Stockman to pick up on his tremendous ideas and sum up the causes of the ongoing financial crisis, Anita Raghavan comes in and tells us the tale of how the US Government finally got its act together and started locking up the insiders who we've always suspected creamed all the profits out of the stock market, amassing fortunes that make Michael Milken look like the enthusiastic amateur he was when it came to insider dealing.I have no doubt that one day we'll read about SAC Capital, but for now Steve Cohen is sitting on USD 8 billion p.a. and we really don't know how his story will end. Until he's had his day in court, if he ever does, indeed, we must presume him innocent; that's how we roll.But there's no need to wait. I don't see anybody topping this breath-taking account . The Millionaire's Apprentice sets a very high bar. The author has conducted deep research into the characters and the events, and this shows. She sat in court, she listened to the tapes, she listened to all views and I'd be extremely surprised if one fact in the entire book is wrong. When there's doubt, besides, the author presents both sides, never shying away from saying how she thinks it went.More than that, this would be a fantastic book even if it was fiction. You get character development here. There's a plot that moves quickly. There are tons of threads that get woven together. The author has evidently left loads of stuff out (duh!), but there's just enough there to make you know there's more. This is a very fine line to walk. Any more and you'd really lose count of the names and roles and angles. Any less and you'd feel short changed. So very often I'd find myself thinking "who's this Goel guy again?" and then immediately "oh yeah, he's the guy at Intel," for example. The key point is she never lost me, this really read like a novel.Except of course it's very much a piece of journalism. An exquisite piece of journalism, at that."So where's the fifth star, Athan, boy?"Ah, yes. I don't buy at all that this book tells the story of the Indian diaspora. The author thinks she's doing two things here. First, telling us a story about insider dealing and second telling us about the "twice blessed" generation of Indian Americans. If I was one of them, I'd be furious. In my view she holds her own people to a crazily high standard here and kind of acts like an uninvited judge and jury on millions of her own.What do I care? I'm from Greece, not India.Well, this book purports to tell us about two things, including on its cover. The fact that it does such an incomplete job of one of the two tasks the author assigned to herself has to be a failure.More to the point, I think the author fails in another respect. By being "plus royaliste que le roi" when it comes to judging one of her own, I think she misses out on something rather big: Rajat Gupta probably acted 100% in line with other people in his position. Yes, maybe he did not notice that the wind had started blowing from a different direction. But if you ask me, by dint of being on the wrong side of the first ever incidence of wiretapping, the poor fellow just got very unlucky. Period. He ain't a stain on all Indian Americans.Finally, a point of order. The basic thing in a Greek tragedy is at some juncture you get presented with a choice. A choice where you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. This is the "tragic" choice. You make that choice and a bunch of inevitable consequences follow and you face them with dignity or with no dignity, everybody dies in the last scene and then we all go home.These fellows never crossed any type of Rubicon the way I see it. They got to where they got by sailing at the appropriate-for-the-time angle toward the wind, but failed to notice when the weather changed. The world changed, not them. And amen to that, of course.But I digress. Buy the book.

I had the pleasure of meeting the author at a conference earlier this year at which she presented an outline of this case. It was fascinating. I have now read the book and Ms Raghavan has done an excellent job of blending what could have been two distinct stories into a single narrative. I had expected to be disinterested in the "rise" and interested in the "fall" but the entire story was gripping from start to finish. Throughly researched and very well written. Reads like a thriller and would make a very good film.

What a great read! A page turner, reads like fiction and yet all grounded in hard fact and research.

One of the best books I picked up recently. The narrative is clear that captures the drama well. Picked up and read the entire book in 2 sessions (could not put it down)!!!

Excellent coverage of the Indian business diaspora in the US and the 'problems' ensuing from close, yet competitive relationships. As always, power and money tend to corrupt.

alles bestens

Excellent book if I was from Asia this would be a must read to understand western culture and the difference between Asian business practise and the formalized North American one. Both have flaws that can be exploited which create ethical challenges if a business person is not centered on honesty and the basis for it.

This is not a novel but it is every bit as gripping as any thriller you are likely to pick up.It was just a question of time before someone wrote a book about these historical business events and Anita Raghavan just happened to be the first. I am sure that there will be other books, possibly many other books but they will have a high bar to cross because Raghavan's book is so darn good - meticulously researched and compellingly written.There is no doubt that the business events discussed are highly significant. The former head of the world's premier consulting firm, who was on the board of many blue chip firms including the pre-eminent financial juggernaut, freely giving privileged information to a shady hedge fund operator - this is not an everyday scenario. Or maybe it is but it was certainly a deep secret and no other comparable case has surfaced as yet.This is an important business story by any yardstick. But there is a sub-text - many of the principals came from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangla Desh so it also a story of South Asians and how they have risen from obscurity and hard-scrabble roots to the very top of establishment America. I am South Asian myself so this resonated deeply in a bitter sweet way. Yes, those convicted were South Asian, but so were those who prosecuted them and held them legally accountable for their transgressions. A true tale of immigrant progress.Raj Rajaratnam, a scrappy Sri Lankan born trader, started a hedge fund called Galleon Group and built it into one of the world's biggest and most influential. He managed billions of dollars and became a billionaire himself. He also lived the high life with private jets flying important customers to choice Super Bowl seats and exotic paid ladies at orchestrated events. For more on this see "The Buy Side" by Turney Duff. His enormous success owed much to a network of informers who fed him confidential information that he used brilliantly to juice his outsize returns. Rajaratnam had strong street smarts and a penetrating insight into human foibles that he used to ruthlessly manipulate persons.For example, Anil Kumar was a McKinsey Director and former classmate at Wharton. McKinsey directors live well but don't own private islands and helicopters to take them there. Rajaratnam commiserated with Kumar about his inadequate compensation, extolled his acumen and analytical abilities and then paid him a million dollars to make use of his "skills". This money was funneled through a foreign bank account in the name of his housekeeper - an arrangement both flimsy and illegal and this came back to haunt Kumar. Gradually it became clear to Kumar that the "skills" Rajaratnam needed was the information he was privy to in his capacity as a McKinsey consultant. He balked, but by them he had accepted the money and the trap was sprung and he started coughing up the information sought.The grand panjandrum was Rajat Gupta the thrice elected global head of consulting giant McKinsey who was perhaps one of the most respected executives in the world. He was on the board of Goldman Sachs, Procter & Gamble, American Airlines and firms of that caliber. The CEOs of both Gillette and P & G have said that the merger of the two firms would not have happened without mediation by Gupta who was both liked and trusted by both sides. He was very wealthy, but not wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice. Full disclosure: Rajat Gupta was a guest speaker at my course in Columbia Business School and what he said was so honest and inspirational that I also invited him to speak at my class at London Business School. He outlined a view of business behavior that resonated deeply with students and that I believe business badly needs. I am still struggling to reconcile what he said and his career at McKinsey with what he was accused - and convicted - of doing later.Rajat Gupta started several ventures with Rajaratnam some of which were successful and some which were not. Wire taps on Rajaratnam's phone showed that Gupta called him seconds after important board meetings - such as at the time of financial turmoil when Warren Buffet agreed to invest five billion dollars in Goldman. Rajaratnam's firm then made significant and highly profitable trades. A lot of circumstantial evidence but enormously strong and convincing to the jury which convicted him.Rajat did enormous good in many fields and was the force behind the Indian School of Business - one of the premier business schools in India. He was the iconic role-model of many Indians including those like Sanjay Wadhwa who, as deputy chief of the SEC's Market Abuse Section, investigated and built the case against him. Quite possibly Gupta also paved the way for South Asians like Preet Bharara, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, to reach the high positions they occupied. Bharara was the one who eventually convicted Gupta.Raghavan takes a Ken Follett approach in her book. If you read "Eye of the Needle" you will recollect that it goes back and forth in time and gradually ties all the characters together. Similarly Raghavan begins with a White House dinner for the visiting Indian Prime Minister, goes back to colonial India and Gupta's father's role in the freedom struggle, back to the US and Gupta's legal travails, back to India during the turmoil and bloodshed of partition and how Wadhwa's parents were caught up in it and so on. I just happen to like this approach and found that Raghavan converted a tale of high level business chicanery into a gripping narrative.The unanswered question is WHY? Why did Gupta, as accomplished and successful an executive as you can find, consort with persons of the ilk of Rajaratnam and readily give away confidential information?Rajaratnam's brother Rengan was quoted in the press as saying "For years these guys were sitting around in sports clubs and exchanging information. That wasn't a crime. And now we immigrants do the same thing and it is?" Presumably Rajaratnam believes this. Does Rajat Gupta also believe it?We do not know much about the rarefied circles in which Rajat mingled so comfortably. Was his behavior the outlier? Or the norm and his misfortune was that he got caught?I am waiting for the book that will shed light on this.

Anita Raghavan has painstakingly written a well-researched book on the shenanigans that go on in the financial markets - in this case on the Wall Street in the New York city, involving Galleon hedge fund managed by a Sri Lankan Tamilian and Wharton Business School MBA, Raj Rajaratnam.Rajaratnam was an archetypal successful player in the financial market - intelligent, technically skilled, well informed, adept at networking and cultivating people, one who was given to cutting corners and covering his tracks, one who appeared to be helpful and generous to people but who was in fact wily, manipulative and treacherous and had a criminal bend of mind, a man with a huge ego, and one who was always greedy for money because money is the only measure of a person's success in life more in the hedonistic USA than elsewhere.Rajat Gupta, a highly qualified (IIT, Delhi and Harvard Busineess School) and experienced head of the blue-blooded, American management consultancy firm, McKinsey & Co. got ensnared during the stock market boom by the quick and easy success of various high net-worth investors and intermediaries operating on the Wall Street, including Rajaratnam, who had become a billionaire by trading in stocks. Given Gupta's high status as McKinsey's MD and his directorships of major American companies including Proctor & Gamble, and a leading investment bank namely, Goldman Sachs, Gupta should have never spoken to Rajaratnam, not even on the weather in Manhattan. But after his two successful terms as McKinsey's MD and when he was continuing to work for McKinsey as a partner, Gupta chose to do business with Rajaratnam in his personal capacity as an investor and potential joint-sponsor of an equity fund.What followed is a tragic story of what greed can do to an exceptionally high achiever and otherwise an intelligent, mature and level-headed person. As a convicted person, it has wiped out forever Gupta's credibility built over a 30-year, highly successful career with McKinsey. After two separate trials, Rajaratnam was sentenced for managing a fund that consistently out-performed the market because of insider trading, to 11 years in prison with a penalty, which he more than deserved. Gupta was sentenced to 2 years in prison with a US$5 million penalty. Moreover, SEC fined him US$13.9 million. The quid pro quo for providing insider information by Gupta to Rajaratnam was not established during the trial but the presiding Judge did not believe that it mitigated gravity of the crime.The book sets out in detail blow-by-blow account of the case and investigations. Gupta appealed against his sentence but, given the wire-tap and irrefutable circumstantial evidences, it is unlikely that he will be exonerated of the charge of compromising his fiduciary responsibility to shareholders and providing to Rajaratnam material, non-public information on various companies' working results to which he was privy as an independent director.An honest person is one who chooses to remain honest even when he is sure that there is no possibility of his being caught if he were to act dishonestly and benefit by it. Very sadly, inspite of his high academic qualifications, outstanding success in professional life and very comfortable financial position, Gupta failed that litmus test. By yielding to greed, he got himself involved with a seasoned crook like Rajaratnam and has paid a terrible price for it. Gupta cannot claim that he did not see through Rajaratnam. In the process, he has also sullied the image of well-educated and successful Indian community in the USA and given reason to Americans and other westerners to believe that Indians in general and even in high positions are not honest and trustworthy.The book is a good reading material for all those who are interested in the financial markets as also those who want to get rich quickly by playing the stock markets or those who are currently engaged in insider trading and absolutely confident that they will never be caught.

読み終わった時の感想は、やっと終わったとい達成感と同時に、もう終わってしまったのかという残念さ。400ページを超える大作ではあるが、今のアメリカで存在感を示しているインドからの移民によるインサイダー事件を中心に、マッキンゼーでトップにまで昇りつめた者とWall Streetでヘッジファンドで金持ちになった者がどのようにインド人社会を利用して私服を肥やしていったのか、またそれを暴こうとするFBIとSECの捜査が生々しく描かれている。インド人の特性とかたずけるか、アメリカ社会に巣食っている悪性と見るかは人によって判断が分かれるとこであろうが、作者自身もインド人であり、細かな描写によって、悪事に関わった人達の心の弱さ、傲慢さに光を当てて、これら登場人物個人の問題がインド人社会の同朋意識を悪用した結果と主張しているように私には感じられた。