Galleon Group (Subject)

When the news of insider trading first broke, i was diligently following up the progress of the trial. Immediately following the conviction of Raj Rajaratnam was the Rajat Gupta case. Though I wasn't aware of Rajat's stature in US, the number of newspaper articles that appeared praising him and chronicling his achievements were overwhelming and piqued my interest. After his conviction the backlash articles were also overwhelming.
When this book came in...i was very excited. Author has done a really really great job in researching about each of the protagonist's background. The book has been well written and there is not much of Financial jiber-jaber which makes it interesting read for even non-financial guys (like me).
Highly recommend this book... very well written and very informative.
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A fascinating look at how a culture of greed and entitlement permeates Wall Street, where outperforming your competition by any means becomes the only goal, and nothing is allowed to get in the way. Anita Raghavan builds a page-turner story from the different threads that compose it, exposing the sheer arrogance, poor ethics and lack of remorse of the cast of characters involved. I wish that she had better followed up on some of the tantalizing leads - several others were also investigated and proceedings later dropped - it would have been good to know why that was so. In a twist that shows that truth can be stranger than fiction, how ironic that Sanjay Wadhwa, the SEC attorney who built the case against Galleon and Rajat Gupta, is himself a member of the South Asian diaspora, as is Preet Bharara (Manhattan US Attorney) who prosecuted them.

As a member of that diaspora myself, I am angered and sorry that a few rotten apples have so tarnished the reputation of my community. As someone who was at Wharton with the characters depicted, I can't say that I am surprised at the actions of some - indeed, this is probably just the tip of the iceberg as far as white collar crime by clever, hungry and ambitious business school graduates is concerned. This book left me wondering at our society, which places so much value on money that people are willing to knowingly compromise themselves in its pursuit. ( )