The Billionaire's Apprentice: The Rise of The Indian-American Elite and The Fall of The Galleon Hedge Fund
Anita Raghavan
Just as WASPs, Irish-Catholics and Our Crowd Jews once made the ascent from immigrants to powerbrokers, it is now the Indian-American's turn. Citigroup, PepsiCo and Mastercard are just a handful of the Fortune 500 companies led by a group known as the "Twice Blessed." Yet little is known about how these Indian emigres (and children of emigres) rose through the ranks. Until now... The collapse of the Galleon Group--a hedge fund that managed more than $7 billion in assets--from criminal charges of insider trading was a sensational case that pitted prosecutor Preet Bharara, himself the son of Indian immigrants, against the best and brightest of the South Asian business community. At the center of the case was self-described King of Kings, Galleon's founder Raj Rajaratnam, a Sri-Lankan-born, Wharton-educated billionaire. But the most shocking allegation was that the éminence grise of Indian business, Rajat Gupta, was Rajaratnam's accomplice and mole. If not for Gupta's nose-to-the-grindstone rise to head up McKinsey & Co and a position on the Goldman Sachs board, men like Rajaratnam would have never made it to the top of America's moneyed elite. Author Anita Raghavan criss-crosses the globe from Wall Street boardrooms to Delhi's Indian Institute of Technology as she uncovers the secrets of this subculture--an incredible tale of triumph, temptation and tragedy.
Award History
0 wins · 1 total
| Award | Year | Result | Category / Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| FT Business Book of the YearMajor | 2013 | Shortlist | Secondary source |
Experimental book profileGenerated by GPT-5.4 nano · may contain inaccuracies
This is an unverified interpretation of the catalog description, offered as an opt-in discovery experiment—not as bibliographic fact.
01 Central figures
- Raj Rajaratnam84%
- Rajat Gupta80%
Show lower-confidence suggestions
These suggestions did not meet the normal display threshold and are more likely to be wrong.
- Preet Bharara66%
02 Central places
None extracted with sufficient confidence.
These suggestions did not meet the normal display threshold and are more likely to be wrong.
- Delhi's Indian Institute of Technology42%
03 Suggested argument
No argument inferred with sufficient confidence.
04 Reading orientation
36 / 100 academicSerious trade
An estimate of intended readership and scholarly apparatus—not quality or importance.
Confidence percentages are the model's own estimates. Profile confidence: 72%.