{ONE}
IN DECEMBER 2006, Anil Kumar, a senior partner at the global consultancy firm McKinsey & Company, sent a two-word email to Raj Rajaratnam, the CEO of the Galleon Group, a multi-billion-dollar hedge fund based in New York. The email said, simply, “Manju Das.”
The words were a reminder to Rajaratnam of where to send a payment of one million dollars to Kumar. He had given the Galleon CEO valuable insider information on an upcoming corporate deal: the acquisition of the Canadian semiconductor company ATI Technologies by the American firm Advanced Micro Devices. Tipped off by Kumar as negotiations proceeded, Galleon built up a strong position in ATI, then sold all its shares after the sale was publicly announced. It made a profit of more than $20 million on the deal.
COMMENT