Rajat Gupta, who ran McKinsey for almost a decade, has been hit with civil insider trading charges for allegedly sharing secret information he learnt as a Goldman Sachs board member with Galleon Group founder Raj Rajaratnam.
The Securities and Exchange Commission’s charges allege Mr Gupta shared information about Warren Buffett’s $5bn capital infusion into the bank in 2008 within one minute of the board’s approval of the deal.
The infusion, which came during the height of the financial crisis, was critical for assuring investors about the bank’s sustainability following the collapse of Lehman Brothers and weekend sale of Merrill Lynch to Bank of America.