Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Rajat Gupta: Bigger Than Madoff?

Via NetNet.
One of the reasons we rarely see such charges against people with the stature and wealth of Gupta is that insider trading makes so little logical sense for such people. There’s really no reason Gupta should leak confidential information to a hedge fund manager. He doesn’t need money, access, prestige or any favors at all.
If he did tip off his hedge fund manager friend, it was something darker than greed or ambition. It was something close to sociopathic narcissism—perhaps a belief that he was somehow above the law, immune to the rules that govern the rest of us. The sort of thing we see in Madoff.
Of course, there’s another explanation: that Gupta didn’t do what the SEC claims he did. That those phone calls to accused insider trader Raj Rajaratnam, made within seconds of the conclusion of board meetings, were just social calls.

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