A Penn-educated journalist, in her first book, chronicled the treachery of fellow Penn alumni in a 2009 insider trading scandal.
Anita Raghavan’s “The Billionaire’s Apprentice,” released earlier this week, details the circumstances that led to the indictment of hedge fund manager Raj Rajaratnam in 2009. Raghavan, a 1986 graduate of the College and former staff writer for The Daily Pennsylvanian, has worked in financial industry journalism for more than 20 years. At Penn, her undergraduate career overlapped with Rajaratnam’s time as an MBA student.
“It’s a Red and Blue story through and through,” Raghavan said.
Born in Malaysia but of Indian descent, Raghavan says she started hearing from members of the Indian community after Rajaratnam and several of his Indian collaborators were arrested in 2009. Subtitled “The Rise of the Indian-American Elite and The Fall of the Galleon Hedge Fund,” “The Billionaire’s Apprentice” focuses on both the financial and cultural effects of Rajaratnam’s indictment and subsequent conviction.
After receiving his MBA from Wharton in 1983, Rajaratnam worked for Chase Bank and then for a boutique investment bank where he started an internal hedge fund that he would later purchase and rename The Galleon Group. Galleon folded in October 2009 after an investigation into alleged securities conspiracy between Rajaratnam, Rajat Gupta and several of their colleagues.
Gupta, who received his MBA from Harvard in 1973, was managing director at McKinsey & Company for almost a decade. In 2006 and 2007, he was also appointed as a member of the boards of Goldman Sachs and Procter & Gamble, respectively.
Gupta was indicted alongside Rajaratnam, Rajaratnam’s brother Rengan, Anil Kumar and Rajiv Goel — all Penn alumni. The men have all been convicted of securities fraud or conspiracy to commit fraud based on evidence that Gupta conveyed information to Rajartnam about stock value he had learned at a Goldman Sachs meeting.
The release of “The Billionaire’s Apprentice” coincides with Gupta’s appeal on his conviction. He is currently awaiting a decision on a re-trial.
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While Gupta, Rajaratnam and their affiliates rose up the ranks of the financial industry in the ‘80s, Raghavan was employed as a staff writer covering the industry at the Wall Street Journal and at Forbes. She was appointed London bureau chief at Forbes in 2008. Currently, she is a contributing writer to The New York Times’s DealBook, a financial news service that reports on mergers, acquisitions and hedge funds.
After graduating from Penn, Raghavan wanted to work overseas. “It was a pretty tough environment for journalists,” she said. She realized that if she wanted to work abroad, she first had to return to New York and start her career there.
Raghavan knew she would start at the very bottom at a general news publication. “[Alternately], I could join a prestigious company like the Dow Jones and start by covering the financial news,” she said.
“I feel like anything, when you delve deeply into it, becomes interesting,” Raghavan reasoned.
Ultimately, she was successful. Over the course of her career, Raghavan has been awarded the Overseas Press Club and New York Press Club awards for her coverage of financial news.
Parmy Olson, Raghavan’s colleague and a current staff writer at Forbes, said that Raghavan has been working on “The Billionaire’s Apprentice” for the past few years.
Calling Raghavan a “hard-nosed news hound who works on getting the most out of her sources,” Olson said that readers can expect a lot of detail in the book.
Echoing Olson, Kai Falkenberg — another colleague of Raghavan’s from Forbes — said that “[Raghavan’s] book and her stories stand out for the small details that convey deep insights into psyches of the biggest players in finance.”
Although Raghavan did not choose her topic because of her affiliation with the University, she did take interest in the case’s many connections to Penn. She said she was struck by how many Penn and Wharton alumni, though they were not indicted, were mentioned in the documents she researched.
Raghavan briefly mused on how Wharton approaches ethics in light of the Galleon and other scandals associated with it. “I wonder if there’s any soul searching at the school,” she said.
“The Billionaire’s Apprentice” is published by the Business Plus division of Hachette Book Group and was available in stores as of June 4.
