The Billionaire's Apprentice
The author provides a gripping account of a story that is Shakespearean in its drama. And she argues, persuasively, that the case is about more than criminality. It is also a study of how an immigrant community has risen to the top of US society. — Read the complete FT review
Synopsis
Just as WASPs, Irish-Catholics and Our Crowd Jews once made the ascent from immigrants to powerbrokers, it is now the Indian-American’s turn. Citigroup, PepsiCo and Mastercard are just a handful of the Fortune 500 companies led by a group known as the “Twice Blessed.” Yet little is known about how these Indian emigres (and children of emigres) rose through the ranks. Until now…
The collapse of the Galeon Group–a hedge fund that managed more than $7 billion in assets–from criminal charges of insider trading was a sensational case that pitted 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 eminence 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 serves on the Goldman Sachs board, men like Rajaratnam would have never made it to the top of America’s power class.
Author Anita Raghavan criss-crosses the globe from Wall Street boardrooms to the classrooms of Delhi’s Indian Institute of Technology as she uncovers the secrets of this subculture–an incredible tale of triumph, temptation and tragedy.
