When Rajat Gupta was sentenced to two years in prison last Wednesday, the government finally nailed to the wall the largest scalp it has taken to date in its multiyear investigation of rampant insider trading on Wall Street. He wasn’t the richest—that would be erstwhile hedge fund manager Raj Rajaratnam, the man to whom Mr. Read More
Rajat Gupta, the former chief executive officer of McKinsey & Co., was sentenced to two years imprisonment for insider trading this afternoon during a hearing presided over by Judge Jed Rakoff at the U.S. Southern District courthouse.
Mr. Gupta, who was convicted in May of using his position on the board of directors at Goldman Sachs to pass privileged information to Galleon Group hedge fund manager Raj Rajaratnam, has sought probation in lieu of imprisonment. The government recommended a jail term of eight to 10 years.
“With today’s sentence, Rajat Gupta now must face the grave consequences of his crime,” said U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara in an emailed statement. “His conduct has forever tarnished a once-sterling reputation that took years to cultivate. We hope that others who might consider breaking the securities laws will take heed from this sad occasion and choose not to follow in Mr. Gupta’s footsteps.” Read More
Whither Europe: Greece’s leading pro-bailout party—conservative New Democracy, which won Sunday’s elections, and socialist Pasok—are still negotiating to form a coalition to govern the teetering nation. Assuming a deal gets done, the first task will be to convince Europe to rewrite the Greek rescue agreement to provide more time—and financing—to meet austerity goals. Read More
A former marketing executive at AT&T pled guilty to insider trading charges after providing sales data for the Apple iPhone and RIM’s Blackberry to a so-called expert network, said U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara in a statement.
Alnoor Ebrahim, 57, of Alpharetta, Georgia, pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud and wire Read More
Whither Europe: Greece’s center-right New Democracy party won 29.7 of the vote in parliamentary elections yesterday, claiming the 50-seat bonus for winning the most votes and positioning the party to form a coalition that would keep the country in the bailout-for-austerity agreement signed with European rescuers. Alex Tsipras’ Syriza party, which had promised to Read More
Rajat Gupta, the former McKinsey & Co. chief executive accused of leaking corporate secrets to hedge fund manager Raj Rajaratnam, will not testify in his own defense, according to a letter sent by Mr. Gupta’s lead attorney Gary P. Naftalis to Judge Jed Rakoff yesterday:
“We have the spent the last day reviewing what Read More
For anyone who’d like to see the bank executives who led America into the teeth of the financial crisis strung up by the laces of their Prada wingtips, a trip to the Southern District courthouse in Lower Manhattan may be a deflating experience.
The Observer had come to the federal courthouse seeking succor. Late last Read More
To the list of difficulties in prosecuting securities fraud, let’s just say people who’ve pleaded guilty to insider trading do not make the most credible witnesses.
Exhibit A: Michael Cardillo, a former-Galleon Group trader who is cooperating with the government’s case against Rajat Gupta, the one-time McKinsey & Co. CEO charged with feeding tips Read More
After 16 years presiding over white collar cases in the U.S. District Court’s Southern District, you’d think Judge Jed Rakoff would be hard to disallusion. Not so. It only took six days for the insider trading trial of Rajat Gupta—the former McKinsey & Co. CEO accused of tipping Galleon Group hedge fund manager Raj Rajaratnam to sensitive corporate secrets—to cause Mr. Rakoff to hang his head in dismay. Read More
Squeeze play: JPMorgan has been selling profitable securities to prop up second-quarter results after the bank’s chief investment office and the trader known as the London Whale incurred billions in losses. The asset sales may be tax inefficient, and will deprive the lender of future gains, which is just too bad for Jamie Dimon’s firm. With its share price down 18 percent from the day before the trading losses were first reported, JPMorgan is under pressure to generate earnings. Read More
