Rajat Gupta

Rajat Kumar Gupta (born December 2, 1948) is an Indian-American business executive and convicted felon who, as CEO, was the first foreign-born managing director of management consultancy firm McKinsey & Company from 1994 to 2003.

He received a Bachelor of Technology degree in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Delhi in 1971.

His economics professor at IIT Delhi was Subramanian Swamy, who wrote his recommendation letter when he applied for Harvard Business School.

Declining a job from the prestigious domestic firm ITC Limited, he received an MBA from Harvard Business School (HBS) in 1973.

Gupta graduated with distinction as a Baker Scholar.

Gupta remarked that the first time he saw an airplane was when he flew to ITC at their request to inform them he would be attending Harvard.

Gupta joined McKinsey & Company in 1973 as one of the earliest Indian Americans at the consultancy.

He was initially rejected because of inadequate work experience, a decision that was overturned after his Harvard Business School professor Walter J. Salmon called Ron Daniel, then head of the New York office and later also the managing director of McKinsey, wrote on Gupta's behalf.

Gupta's mentors at McKinsey included Ron Daniel, the former managing director who as senior partner first hired Gupta into the New York office, and Anupam (Tino) Puri, the first Indian at the firm and eventual senior partner.

He, in turn, mentored Anil Kumar as another early Indian-American at the consultancy.

Gupta and Kumar "were the face of McKinsey in India."

According to The Financial Times, "the two operated as a forceful double-act to secure business for McKinsey, win access in Washington and build a brotherhood of donors around the Hyderabad-based ISB and a handful of social initiatives."

Gupta began his career in New York before moving to Scandinavia to become the head of McKinsey offices in 1981.

He did well in what was then considered a "backwater" area; this is where he first made his mark.

Elected senior partner in 1984, he became head of the Chicago office in 1990.

In 1994 he was elected the firm's first managing director (chief executive) born outside of the US, and then re-elected twice in 1997 and 2000.

Gupta is widely regarded as one of the first Indians to successfully break through the glass ceiling, as the first Indian-born CEO of a multinational corporation (not just a consultancy).

During Gupta's time as head of McKinsey, the firm opened offices in 23 new countries and doubled its consultant base to 891 partners, increasing revenue 280 percent to $3.4 billion.

His annual salary was estimated at $5–10 million USD.

However Gupta's tenure was marked by controversy.

When Gupta joined McKinsey, it was a small partnership run according to the high standards of its early leader, Marvin Bower, but by the time Gupta became managing director, McKinsey was under pressure from an increasingly competitive market, and Gupta's expansion efforts were said to have watered down McKinsey's vaunted principles.

Enron, closely identified with McKinsey, collapsed during his time as managing director.

In 2012, he was convicted for insider trading and spent two years in prison.

Gupta was a board member of corporations including Goldman Sachs, Procter & Gamble and American Airlines, as well as an advisor to non-profit organizations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

He is the co-founder of the Indian School of Business, American India Foundation, New Silk Route and Scandent Solutions.

Gupta was convicted in June 2012 on insider trading charges of four criminal felony counts of conspiracy and securities fraud in the Galleon scandal.

He was sentenced in October 2012 to two years in prison, an additional year on supervised release and ordered to pay $5 million in fines.

His conviction was upheld by a Federal Appeals Court on 25 March 2014.

An application to remain free until the court determined whether it would hear the appeal was denied in June 2014 leaving Gupta having to commence his two-year prison term that month.

He then lodged an appeal of his conviction with the U.S. Supreme Court which was subsequently upheld in April 2015.

After high school, Gupta ranked 15th in the nation in the entrance exam for the Indian Institutes of Technology, IIT JEE.

He was released on monitored house arrest in January 2016 and from house arrest in March 2016.

Rajat Gupta was born in Calcutta, India, to a Bengali Baidya father Ashwini Gupta and a Punjabi mother Pran Kumari.

His father was a journalist for Ananda Publishers and a professor in Calcutta's Ripon College prior to that.

His mother taught at a Montessori school.

Rajat has 3 siblings.

When Gupta was five the family moved to New Delhi, where his father went to start the Delhi-edition of the newspaper Hindustan Standard.

Gupta's father died when Gupta was sixteen and his mother died two years later.

Now orphans, Gupta and his siblings "decided to live by ourselves. It was pretty unusual in those days."

He was a student at Modern School in New Delhi.