Book review: The Billionaire`s Apprentice by Anita Raghavan

The Billionaire’s Apprentice by Anita Raghavan

It has to be said. The book’s jacket does gross disservice to its contents. A murky green background, awkward juxtaposition of the two `perps,` and loads of descriptive lines make for a crowded cover that hassles more than interests.

However, in yet another instance of cover and book disparity, Anita Raghavan’s telling of the huge insider trading scam of 2009, is a gripping read.

Using a carefully pared down style, straight reportage with just that bit of necessary garnishing vis-à-vis character fill-ins, Raghavan introduces us to Sri Lankan Tamil Raj Rajaratnam and his astonishing life in the top echelons of Wall Street. All the riches to be reaped in the investing world seems to be his for the taking; all investors and traders puppets to be manipulated deftly.

At its peak, Rajaratnam’s Galleon Group was managing something above 7 billion USD in assets.

And of course, even as Rajaratnam was amassing wealth beyond ordinary dreams of avarice, though certainly not beyond his, the authorities were watching.

Once the probe begins, all it takes is the careful, calibrated pulling of one or two threads before the whole astounding tale unravels. What is truly impressive is the slow painstaking putting together of the case by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) agency, leaving virtually nothing to chance.

From 2009 on, the US Attorney’s office, federal prosecutors and FBI agents all worked shoulder to shoulder to crack the insider trading scam, build the case and bring the perpetrators to justice. This is how to build a case against a felon. If you want him to come to justice, that is. As an Indian who watches the almost daily parade of big `uns who get away, one feels the pain.

Raj Rajaratnam emerges as master of his own universe but a rather one-dimensional figure; the reader easily `gets` him, his motivations, his unscrupulous bull run. The Corleone parallel is unintentionally funny.

At one point, the Rajaratnam brothers, three of them, are tagged with Corleone names by the agency: Raj is Michael, Rengan is Sonny and Ragakanthan is Fredo. Raj had a jet parked at a NJ airport for a quick getaway which, of course, he was not able to do. The man who built up the Galleon Group with blood, sweat and bribes and pocketed something to the tune of 75 million USD, eventually got what was coming to him.

Rajat Gupta, now, he is truly the Icarus who fell from the sky. Raghavan’s portrait of the man who was arraigned even as he was approaching his sixtieth birthday, is tinged faintly with sympathy. The public persona is of a thorough gentleman, decent, brilliant, a go-getter but in the most elegant way, a philanthropist par excellence working with both gilded and common charities, extremely well connected to just about every global mover and shaker, board member of several blue chip companies, three-time head of McKinsey, a man whose glittering world was entirely of his own making and well deserved. What then drove such a man to do what he did?

Soon enough, the reader turns sleuth, trying to unearth just about anything that will let Gupta off the hook. “My reputation is the most important thing I have,“ says Gupta and the reader empathises with his humiliation. It is another matter of course, that with Gupta’s indictment, the hithertofore upstanding Indian business image took a severe hit.

The dramatic personae are all drawn in accomplished fashion by Raghavan; the portrait of one less than upright minion, McKinsey’s Anil Kumar, is masterly. Rajat Gupta and Raj Rajaratnam. The two men couldn’t be more different: corporate buccaneer vs. corporate statesman.

Oh yes, they did have one (trivial) thing in common: both carried and used as many as 13 cell phones! These two men gather in boatloads of cash (a favourite term of the author) but Nemesis was at their heels. Old, old story.

And in the end, you realise it’s not all totally about greed for the greenbacks that drove them and their associates. Raghavan’s book lays bare the caste system of the business world and how if one can game it, that high becomes a surefire addiction. It’s also like riding the proverbial tiger… once you are on, you can’t really get off.