Indian B-school rallies behind former Goldman Sachs director Rajat Gupta facing insider trading charges

Former Mckinsey chief and ex-director on the board of Wall Street major Goldman Sachs, Rajat Gupta, who has been implicated in the Galleon scam and charged for insider trading by the US Securities and Exchange Commission, has received the support of premier business school, the Hyderabad-based Indian School of Business (ISB), where he is the Chairman of the Board.

The School asserted on Wednesday that they would be retaining him in the post and issued a communiqué saying We note that the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has initiated administrative and civil proceedings against our Chairman, Rajat Gupta. We also note the statement of the counsel for Rajat Gupta, which asserts that the allegations are totally baseless. The ISB community is confident that Rajat Gupta will be vindicated. He continues to be Chairman of the ISB Executive Board. Prior to that, Gupta had reportedly written a mail to the School, asserting his innocence and describing the SEC's allegations as baseless, speculative and based on hearsay.

Gupta, a widely respected leader in the corporate fraternity, is charged with leaking secrets about Warren Buffett's plans to invest $5 billion in Goldman Sachs, where the accused was a director, to the Galleon Group Hedge Fund Director Raj Rajaratnam.

Meanwhile local media reports suggest that ISB has advised all students, faculty, members of the board and even alumni against speaking with the media on this issue.

ISB is one of the most prominent international business schools in the entire Asian region and is ranked number 13 in Financial Times' Global Top MBA Rankings for 2011. Gupta was one of the founders of the ISB and has been closely associated with the institution ever since its inception.