Rajat Gupta: Not just a jackass, a dumbass too

[smiling_bandit]

Breaking new alright:

Rajat Gupta is (was) a quite important man. He is (was) a bigshot at the McKinsey consulting company, and this man has friends. Lots of powerful, important friends and clients - Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, etc. The consulting company has some of the biggest and most important firms in the world as customers. While he’s no longer the managing Director, he’s still a leader.

And you’ve been handing secrets - confidential business secrets he was entrusted with as officer of the company - off to your dirty, cheating businessman friend, Raj Rajaratnam, currently in federal prison after being convicted of insider trading. Guess we know where he got some of those tips.

Here’s to you, Real Man of Genius! You not only managing to fling yourself face-first into the mud, but are quite likely to take your whole damn company down with you. That’s an accomplishment wirthy of being engraved on your tombstone. And McKinsey has seventeen thousand employees. I sincerely hope they find someway to sue your ass for every dime they paid you and give it to them.

And for what, huh? To be buddies with Raj Rajatnam? You’re a leading businessman, former CEO of three top companies, and were friends with some of America’s msot important leaders. I don’t agree with the policies of many of them, but they trusted you with financial secrets, friendships, and charity work, jerkoff.

Bah. Hopefully, your complete disgrace will serve as a lesson to some other wannabe kingmaker.

(Article here: The Boomer Establishment Sinks Deeper Into Failure and Shame - The American Interest )

[WordMan]

Have seen his name mentioned during Raj’s trial but wasn’t sure of Gupta’s invovlement - here is a quote from the NYT:

At Mr. Rajaratnam’s trial, the government played a recorded conversation between Mr. Gupta and Mr. Rajaratnam in July 2008. On that call, Mr. Gupta divulged that Goldman was considering a purchase of either Wachovia or American International Group.

Evidence that Mr. Rajaratnam traded on this information was never presented, however.

Two of the most incriminating calls played in court pertained to tips that the government said had come from Mr. Gupta. But those calls were conversations between Mr. Rajaratnam and his employees, which could make them inadmissible in a trial of Mr. Gupta.

In one call played for the jury, Mr. Rajaratnam told a colleague, “I heard yesterday from somebody who’s on the board of Goldman Sachs that they are going to lose $2 per share.” In the other, Mr. Rajaratnam said to his trader, “I got a call saying something good is going to happen to Goldman.”

The S.E.C.’s original case also outlined evidence that could potentially be used at trial. That includes Mr. Gupta’s phone records of on Sept. 23, 2008. That day, the Goldman board met via telephone to consider Mr. Buffett’s $5 billion investment in Goldman.

“Immediately after disconnecting from the board call, Gupta called Rajaratnam from the same line,” the S.E.C. filing says. A minute later, Galleon funds bought more than 175,000 shares of Goldman just before the market closed, the agency says, and later netted a $900,000 profit when the deal was announced.

Though he had an enviable résumé and earned millions of dollars a year at McKinsey, Mr. Gupta became fixated on the extraordinary wealth showered on hedge fund managers and private equity chiefs, according to trial testimony. Consultants are well paid, but the compensation pales in comparison to those Wall Street titans.

(I will report this post to the mods to ensure it is okay to past that many paragraphs into this type of thread).

A lot of circumstantial evidence, to be sure.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

If I understand this right, you’re not pissed that Gupta broke the law, you’re pissed that he did it to benefit somebody you don’t like.

Erm… okay.

[smiling_bandit]

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

If I understand this right, you’re not pissed that Gupta broke the law, you’re pissed that he did it to benefit somebody you don’t like.

:dubious:

Since you’re living up to your username today, here’s a breakdown:

(1) He’s a cheating bastard who
(2) Betrayed his closest friends and
(3) Potentially hurt thousands of people
(4) Because he was jealous of somebody else’s success.

That clear enough for you champ?

[WordMan]

@smiling_bandit

:dubious:

Since you’re living up to your username today, here’s a breakdown:

(1) He’s a cheating bastard who
(2) Betrayed his closest friends and
(3) Potentially hurt thousands of people
(4) Because he was jealous of somebody else’s success.

That clear enough for you champ?

You are assuming that -

• he did pass on tips
• he did it so he could hang with the billionaires

As to the former, yeah, the circumstantial evidence seems pretty damning. As to the latter, hmm, this seems like the first attempt at establishing a narrative by the media. We’ll learn more during the trial most likely.

Given his huge business success and reputation for strategic smarts, reducing it to “he gossiped with Raj to show he could hang with the big boys” seems overly simple.

So it seems he’s done something bad, but it is not clear what combination of evil, greedy, stupid or thoughtless he is.

I do wonder what impact this may have on McKinsey - it seems he is mostly accused of sharing information he got from his Board roles, not from McKinsey relationships. They are so deeply ingrained in so many companies…

[Nava]

Personally, I’m now pissed that he shares the name of a man I respect greatly, Rohm and Haas’s Raj Gupta.

I know there’s a lot of Raj Guptas out there, but dangit, it’s going to take me a while to get use to this.