Three weeks after the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) slapped insider trading charges on him, Indian-American businessman Rajat Gupta has offered to resign as chairman of the Hyderabad-based Indian School of Business (ISB). Gupta has requested the board that he be relieved of his responsibilities, Sriram Gopalakrishnan, director of marketing and communications at the ISB, told IANS here on Monday.
He said the board will consider Gupta's request when it meets April 2. Gupta, who is facing the insider trading charges in the US, will not attend the board meeting, which is also likely to pick his successor. "Rajat Gupta has requested the ISB executive board to relieve him of his responsibilities till his pending matter with the US SEC is resolved," said a statement by the premier business school.
"This, and the appointment of the new chairman, will be tabled at the upcoming board meeting April 2," the statement added. Gupta, the former chief of global consulting business McKinsey & Co, has been accused of having passed on confidential information on Goldman Sachs Group Inc. And Procter & Gamble Co. (P&G) to hedge fund manager Raj Rajaratnam, founder of Galleon Group LLC. Gupta, an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi and Harvard Business School, allegedly disclosed information to Rajaratnam about a $5 billion investment in Goldman by Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. ISB, the brain child of Gupta, was ranked as the 12th top business school in the world by Financial Times, London, in 2010. Gupta, 62, co-founded ISB in 2001 with a group of leading industrialists and academicians from India and abroad.
He has been instrumental in the meteoric rise of ISB, whose 30-member board comprises the who's who of Indian business and top global CEOs.