Ratan Tata
Born	(1937-12-28) 28 December 1937 (age 74) Bombay, Bombay Presidency, British India
Residence	Colaba, Mumbai, India[1]
Nationality	Indian
Ethnicity	Parsi
Alma mater	Cornell University Harvard University
Occupation	Chairman of Tata Group
Years active	1962-present
Religion	Zoroastrian
Spouse	unmarried
Awards	Padma Bhushan (2000) Padma Vibhushan (2008) KBE (2009)
Signature	150px

Sir Ratan Naval Tata KBE (Gujarati: રતન નવલ ટાટા; born 28 December 1937) is an Indian businessman who became chairman (1991– ) of the Tata Group, a Mumbai-based conglomerate.^[2] He is a member of a prominent family of Indian industrialists and philanthropists (see Tata family).

Among many other honours accorded him during his career, Tata received the Padma Bhushan, one of India’s most distinguished civilian awards, in 2000 and Padma Vibhushan in 2008.^[3] He has also been ranked as India's most powerful CEO.^[4]

Early life[link]

Ratan Tata was adopted to famous Tata , a prominent family belonging to the Parsi community. Ratan is the grandson of Tata group founder Jamsedji Tata. His childhood was troubled, with his parents separating in the mid-1940s when he was merely seven and his younger brother Jimmy was five years old. Their mother moved out and both Ratan and his brother were raised by their grandmother Lady Navajbai.^[5]

Tata started his schooling at Campion School and finished at Cathedral and John Connon School both in Bombay.^[6] Ratan Tata completed his B.S. in architecture with structural engineering from Cornell University in 1962, and the Advanced Management Program from Harvard Business School in 1975.^[7] He is a part of the Alpha Sigma Phi fraternity.^[8]

Career at Tata Sons[link]

When he returned to India in 1962 after turning down a job with IBM on the advice of JRD, he was sent to Jamshedpur to work on the shop floor at Tata Steel with other blue-collar employees, shovelling limestone and handling the blast furnace.^[9] In 1971, he was appointed the Director of National Radio and Electronics (Nelco), which was in dire straits when he came on board: with losses of 40% and barely 2% share of the consumer electronics market. However, just when he turned it around (from 2% to 25% market share), the Emergency was declared. A weak economy and labour issues compounded the problem and Nelco was quickly near collapse again.

For his next assignment, in 1977 he was asked to turn around the sick Empress Mills, which he did. However, he was refused a Rs 50 lakh investment required to make the textile unit competitive. Empress Mills floundered and was finally closed in 1986.

In 1981, JRD Tata stepped down as Tata Industries chairman, naming Ratan as his successor. He was heavily criticized for lacking experience in running a company of the scale of Tata Industries.^[9]

In 1991, he was appointed group chairman of the Tata group. As group chairman, he has been responsible for converting "the corporate commonwealth" of different Tata-affiliated companies into a cohesive company. He has been responsible for the acquisition of Tetley, Jaguar Land Rover and Corus, which have turned Tata from a largely India-centric company into a global business, with 65% revenues coming from abroad. He also pushed the development of Indica and the Nano. He is widely credited for the success of the Tata Group of companies, especially after the liberalization of controls after the 1990s.^[1]

In August 2007, Ratan Tata lead Tata Group's acquisition of British steel maker Corus. At that time, this was the largest takeover of a foreign company by an Indian company, and resulted in Tata Group becoming the fifth largest steel producer in the world. According to the BBC, however, some analysts criticized the move, saying that Tata Group had overpaid for Corus and had prioritized national pride before its shareholders.^[10]

Tata is set to retire in December 2012 to be succeeded by Cyrus Mistry, the 42-year-old son of Pallonji Mistry and managing director of Shapoorji Pallonji Group.^[11]

Honours, awards and international recognition[link]

Ratan Tata serves in senior capacities in various organisations in India and he is a member of the Prime Minister's Council on Trade and Industry. Tata is on the board of governors of the East-West Center, the advisory board of RAND's Center for Asia Pacific Policy and serves on the program board of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's India AIDS initiative.^[12]

Ratan Tata's foreign affiliations include membership of the international advisory boards of the Mitsubishi Corporation, the American International Group, JP Morgan Chase and Booz Allen Hamilton. He is also a member of the board of trustees of the RAND Corporation, University of Southern California and Cornell University.^[13][14] He also serves as a board member on the Republic of South Africa's International Investment Council and is a member of the Asia-Pacific advisory committee for the New York Stock Exchange. In 2010, he joined BMB Group as an advisory board member.

• FIRST Award for Responsible Capitalism.^[27]
• 26th Robert S. Hatfield Fellow in Economic Education, awarded by Cornell University^[28]
• Recipient of the 'Global Indian Award' at the NASSCOM Global Leadership Awards 2008^[29]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Ratan Naval Tata

• Ratan Naval Tata's chairman profile at Tata Group
• Profile at The Guardian
• Ratan Tata collected news and commentary at The Wall Street Journal
• Ratan Naval Tata collected news and commentary at The Bloomberg Businessweek
• Ratan Naval Tata collected news and commentary at The Times of India
• Ratan Tata at the Notable Names Database
• "Ratan Tata '59: The Cornell Story" YouTube video

v t e Chairmen of Tata Group Jamsetji Tata Dorabji Tata Nowroji Saklatwala J. R. D. Tata Ratan Tata Cyrus Pallonji Mistry Category

v t e Tata Group Divisions and subsidiaries Cromā · The Indian Hotels Company (Ginger · Taj Hotels Resorts and Palaces) · Tata Advanced Systems · Tata Business Support Services · Tata Chemicals (British Salt · Tata Chemicals Europe) · Tata Communications (VSNL International Canada) · Tata Consultancy Services (CMC · Tata Research Development and Design Centre) · Tata Elxsi · Tata Global Beverages (Eight O'Clock Coffee · Good Earth Teas · Tata Coffee · Tetley) · Tata Housing Development Company · Tata Interactive Systems · Tata Motors (Jaguar Land Rover · Tata Daewoo · Tata Hispano) · Tata Power (Tata Power SED) · Tata Steel (Tata Steel Europe · Tayo Rolls) · Tata Technologies · Titan Industries (Tanishq) · Trent (Star Bazaar · Westside) · Voltas Joint ventures TATA AIG General Insurance (74%) · TATA AIG Life Insurance (74%) · Tata BP Solar (50%) · Tata McGraw-Hill · Tata Sky (80%) · Tata Teleservices (Tata DoCoMo · Virgin Mobile India (50%)) (74%) · Telcon Construction Solutions (40%) Brands I-shakti People Jamsetji Tata · Ratanji Dadabhoy · R Gopalakrishnan · Dorabji Tata · Nowroji Saklatwala · J. R. D. Tata · Ratan Tata · Pallonji Mistry · Surya Kant · Cyrus Pallonji Mistry Other Bombay House · Tata-Dhan Academy · Tata Football Academy · Tata Sons Category

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The Birla family is a family in India. The fore-father of the Birla family is Shiv Narain Birla, a member of the Marwari community from Pilani, Jhunjhunu, in the westerly state of Rajasthan. He moved to Bombay around 1857 to establish a trading house. His son, Baldeodas Birla moved to Calcutta in 1961 to set up his own business and continued the family.

See also[link]

• Tata family
• Wadia family

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Birla family

• Interactive Birla Family Tree on India Times

This article about an Indian company is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e

Nouriel Roubini

New Keynesian economics
Nouriel Roubini at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2012
Born	(1959-03-29) March 29, 1959 (age 53) Istanbul, Turkey
Nationality	American
Institution	New York University
Field	International economics
Alma mater	Bocconi University (B.A. 1982) Harvard University (Ph.D. 1988)
Influences	John Maynard Keynes Hyman Minsky Larry Summers Jeffrey Sachs
Information at IDEAS/RePEc

Nouriel Roubini (born March 29, 1959) is an American economist. He anticipated the collapse of the United States housing market and the worldwide recession which started in 2008. He teaches at New York University's Stern School of Business and is the chairman of Roubini Global Economics, an economic consultancy firm.

The child of Iranian Jews, he grew up in Italy. After receiving a BA in political economics at Bocconi University, Milan and a doctorate in international economics at Harvard University, he became an academic at Yale and a practicing economist at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Federal Reserve, World Bank, and Bank of Israel. Much of his early research focused on emerging markets. During the administration of President Bill Clinton, he was a senior economist for the Council of Economic Advisers, later moving to the United States Treasury Department as a senior adviser to Timothy Geithner, who in 2009 became Treasury Secretary.

Roubini's critical economic views have earned him the nicknames "Dr. Doom" and "permabear" in the media.^[1] In 2008, Fortune magazine wrote, "In 2005 Roubini said home prices were riding a speculative wave that would soon sink the economy. Back then the professor was called a Cassandra. Now he's a sage".^[2] The New York Times notes that he foresaw "homeowners defaulting on mortgages, trillions of dollars of mortgage-backed securities unraveling worldwide and the global financial system shuddering to a halt".^[1] In September 2006, he warned a skeptical IMF that "the United States was likely to face a once-in-a-lifetime housing bust, an oil shock, sharply declining consumer confidence, and, ultimately, a deep recession". Nobel laureate Paul Krugman adds that his once "seemingly outlandish" predictions have been matched "or even exceeded by reality."^[3]

As Roubini's descriptions of the current economic crisis have proven to be accurate, he is today a major figure in the U.S. and international debate about the economy, and spends much of his time shuttling between meetings with central bank governors and finance ministers in Europe and Asia.^[1] Although he is ranked only 512th in terms of lifetime academic citations,^[4] he was #4 on Foreign Policy magazine's list of the "top 100 global thinkers."^[5] In 2011, he was named by Foreign Policy magazine to its list of top global thinkers.^[6] He has appeared before Congress, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the World Economic Forum at Davos.

Early life and education[link]

Nouriel Roubini was born in Istanbul, Turkey, to Iranian Jewish parents.^[1] When he was an infant, his family lived briefly in Iran and Israel. From 1962 to 1983 he resided in Italy, especially in Milan, where he attended the local Jewish school and then the Bocconi University, earning a B.A., summa cum laude, in economics. He received his Ph.D. in international economics from Harvard University in 1988, where his adviser was Jeffrey Sachs.^[1] He is a U.S. citizen and speaks English, Persian, Italian, Hebrew, and conversational French .^[7]

Career[link]

For much of the 1990s, Roubini combined academic research with policy making by teaching at Yale and then in New York, while also being employed at the International Monetary Fund, the Federal Reserve, World Bank, and Bank of Israel. Currently, he is a professor at the Stern School of Business at New York University. Long study of emerging market blowouts in Asia and Latin America helped him spot the looming disaster in the U.S. "I’ve been studying emerging markets for 20 years, and saw the same signs in the U.S. that I saw in them, which was that we were in a massive credit bubble," he said.^[8]

By 1998, he joined the Clinton administration first as a senior economist in the White House Council of Economic Advisers and then moved to the Treasury department as a senior adviser to Timothy Geithner, then the undersecretary for international affairs, who in 2009 became Treasury secretary in the Obama administration.^[8]

Roubini returned to the IMF in 2001 as a visiting scholar while it battled a financial meltdown in Argentina. He cowrote a book on saving bankrupt economies entitled, Bailouts or Bail-ins? and launched his own consulting firm.

Role models[link]

He credits a number of economists for his understanding of economics. He said, "One person who has had a great impact on me intellectually was my adviser at Harvard, Jeffrey Sachs. For me he’s the model of a great intellectual. He is both a rigorous academic and very human, involved in big picture issues such as poverty, AIDS, and Africa. He’s someone with a great mind that is also very engaged with the world. Another intellectual hero is Larry Summers, the former President of Harvard, an amazing intellectual and academic, who is very deeply involved with the policy world. I worked for him for many years in the US Treasury during the Clinton Administration".^[9]

Global nomad[link]

He likes to refer to himself as a "global nomad", and says, "You can be sitting still surfing the Internet, and experience other worlds, ideas and societies. But I’ve found that there is nothing better than visiting a different country, even if for three days. ... you can’t only be a virtual Global Nomad, with goggles on, in a virtual reality. You have to be there. You have to see it, smell it and live it. You have to see people, travel, and interact."^[9]

Partly to fulfill this need, he became chairman of RGE, an economic consultancy for financial analysis. In describing the purpose of RGE Monitor, he said, "the world is my home, so everything about society and culture—no matter how miniscule—is worth knowing. I am an information junkie and created RGE Monitor to collect information about what’s happening around the world."^[9]

Speaking of his early influences, Roubini said, "I was born into a relatively orthodox Jewish family in Iran, lived in Israel and Turkey, and then moved to Italy as a child. By the age of six, instead of going to a yeshiva, I went to a secular Jewish school where I interacted with kids from all sorts of different backgrounds. Had I gone to an orthodox Jewish school, I would perhaps be orthodox now and may have never become a Global Nomad."^[9]

Personal investments[link]

During an interview in June 2009, he was asked about his personal lifestyle expenses and other investments. He said, "I regularly save about 30% of my income. Apart from my mortgage, I don’t have any other debts. The credit crunch hasn’t affected me much. . . . I’ve always lived within my means and, luckily, have never been out of work. I would say I’m a frugal person—I don’t have very expensive tastes. . . . You don’t need to spend a lot to enjoy things."^[7]

Asked whether he invests in stocks, he replied, "Not as much these days. I used to have a lot in equities—about 75%—but over the past three years, I’ve had about 95% in cash and 5% in equities. You’re not getting much from savings these days but earning 0% is better than losing 50%. . . . I don’t believe in picking individual stocks or assets. . . . Never invest your money as though you are gambling at the casino. Buying and selling individual stocks is a waste of time."^[7]

Economic forecast[link]

U.S. economy[link]

In the 1990s, Roubini studied the collapse of emerging economies. He used an intuitive, historical approach backed up by an understanding of theoretical models to analyze these countries and came to the conclusion that a common denominator was the large current account deficits financed by loans from abroad. Roubini theorized that the United States might be the next to suffer, and as early as 2004 began writing about a possible future collapse.^[1] Business Week magazine writer Michael Mandel, however, noted in 2006 that Roubini and other economists often make general predictions which could happen over multiyear periods.^[10]

In September 2006, he foresaw the end of the real estate bubble: "When supply increases, prices fall: that’s been the trend for 110 years, since 1890. But since 1997, real home prices have increased by about 90 percent. There is no economic fundamental—real income, migration, interest rates, demographics—that can explain this. It means there was a speculative bubble. And now that bubble is bursting." In the Spring 2006 issue of International Finance, he wrote an article titled "Why Central Banks Should Burst Bubbles"^[11] in which he argued that central banks should take action against asset bubbles. When asked whether the real estate ride was over, he said, "Not only is it over, it’s going to be a nasty fall."^[12]

By May 2009, he felt that analysts expecting the U.S. economy to rebound in the third and fourth quarter were "too optimistic".^[13] He expected the full recession to last 24 or 36 months, and believed in the possibility of an "L-shaped" slow recovery that Japan went through in The Lost Decade.^[14]

In his opinion, much of the current recession's cause is due to "boom-and-bust cycles," and he feels the U.S. economy needs to find a different growth path in the future. "We’ve been growing through a period of time of repeated big bubbles," he said. "We’ve had a model of 'growth' based on overconsumption and lack of savings. And now that model has broken down because we borrowed too much." He feels that too much human capital went into financing the "most unproductive form of capital, meaning housing" and would like to see America create a model of growth in more-productive activities. He feels that "sustainable growth may mean investing slowly in infrastructures for the future, and rebuilding our human capital," by investing in renewable resources. "We don’t know what it’s going to be," he says, "but it’s going to be a challenge to find a new growth model. It’s not going to be simple."^[15]

Recovery from recession

In August 2009, Roubini predicted that the global economy would begin recovering near the end of 2009, but the U.S. economy is likely to grow only about one percent annually during the next two years, which is less than the three percent normal "trend."^[16] He noted that the Fed is "now embarked on a policy in which they are in effect directly monetizing about half of the budget deficit," but that as of now "monetization is not inflationary," as banks were holding much of the money themselves and not relending it. When these attitudes reverse at the end of the recession, that would be time for an "exit strategy, of mopping up that liquidity" and taking some of the money back out of circulation, "so it doesn’t just bid up house prices and stock values in a new bubble. And that will be 'very, very tricky indeed,'" he stated.^[15]

Also, in late July, he warned that if no clear exit strategy is outlined and implemented, there was the potential of a perfect storm: fiscal deficits, rising bond yields, higher oil prices, weak profits, and a stagnant labor market, which combined could "blow the recovering world economy back into a double-dip recession."^[16]

Global economy[link]

2006[link]

In 2006 Roubini predicted that Italy, and possibly a series of other eurozone countries (Portugal, Spain, Greece) might have to exit the eurozone if they did not implement "serious economic reforms." " [It] is not a foregone conclusion but, if Italy does not reform, an exit from EMU within 5 years is not totally unlikely. Indeed, like Argentina, Italy faces a growing competitiveness loss given an increasingly overvalued currency and the risk of falling exports and growing current account deficit. The growth slowdown will make the public deficit and debt worse and potentially unsustainable over time. And if a devaluation cannot be used to reduce real wages, the real exchange rate overvaluation will be undone via a slow and painful process of wage and price deflation."^[17]

2009[link]

As of January 2009, he remained pessimistic about the U.S. and global economy. He said in September, 2008, "we have a subprime financial system, not a subprime mortgage market".^[18] "As the U.S. economy shrinks, the entire global economy will go into recession. In Europe, Canada, Japan, and the other advanced economies, it will be severe. Nor will emerging market economies—linked to the developed world by trade in goods, finance, and currency—escape real pain."^[19] He was quoted in South Africa's 2009 budget speech for his role in predicting the current financial crisis in the developed markets.

Roubini notes that the subprime issues are a global, and not just a U.S. problem. In an interview with author James Fallows in late spring of 2009, he stated, "People talk about the American subprime problem, but there were housing bubbles in the U.K., in Spain, in Ireland, in Iceland, in a large part of emerging Europe, like the Baltics all the way to Hungary and the Balkans. It was not just the U.S., and not just 'subprime.' It was excesses that led to the risk of a tipping point in many different economies."^[15]

His pessimism is focused on the short-run rather than the medium or long-run.^[1] In Foreign Policy (Jan/Feb 2009), he writes, "Last year’s worst-case scenarios came true. The global financial pandemic that I and others had warned about is now upon us. But we are still only in the early stages of this crisis. My predictions for the coming year, unfortunately, are even more dire: The bubbles, and there were many, have only begun to burst".^[19]

At a conference in Dubai in January, 2009, he said, the U.S. banking system was "effectively insolvent." He added that the "systemic banking crisis.... The problems of Citi, Bank of America and others suggest the system is bankrupt. In Europe, it’s the same thing."^[20] To deal with this problem, he recommends that the U.S. government "do triage between banks that are illiquid and undercapitalized but solvent, and those that are insolvent. The insolvent ones you have to shut down." He adds, "We're in a war economy. You need command-economy allocation of credit to the real economy. Not enough is being done," he felt at the time.^[21]

2010[link]

In 2010, he again warned that despite an improved economy with rising stock markets, the crisis was not over and new bubbles were on the horizon:

"We are just at the next stage. This is where we move from a private to a public debt problem . . . We socialised part of the private losses by bailing out financial institutions and providing fiscal stimulus to avoid the great recession from turning into a depression. But rising public debt is never a free lunch, eventually you have to pay for it."^[22]

In late May 2010, markets around the world began dropping due partly to problems in Greece and the Eurozone. "Roubini believes Greece will prove to be just the first of a series of countries standing on the brink," writes the Telegraph.^[22] Roubini explains the new issues governments must deal with:

"We have to start to worry about the solvency of governments. What is happening today in Greece is the tip of the iceberg of rising sovereign debt problems in the eurozone, in the UK, in Japan and in the US. This... is going to be the next issue in the global financial crisis."^[22]

China

Roubini met officials in China during spring 2009, and points out that many Chinese commentators blame American "overborrowing and excess" for dragging them into a recession. However, he states that "even they realize that the very excess of American demand has created a market for Chinese exports." He adds that although Chinese leaders "would love to be less dependent on American customers and hate having so many of their nation’s foreign assets tied up in U.S. dollars," they’re now "more worried about keeping Chinese exporters in business. . . . I don’t think even the Chinese authorities have fully internalized the contradictions of their position."^[15]

2011[link]

Roubini and political scientist Ian Bremmer have described the 21st century world as fragmenting economically and politically, where the "old models of understanding global dynamics are struggling" to keep up with rapid changes. In an article in Foreign Affairs magazine, they describe what they call a "G-Zero world," where the United States no longer has the resources to continue as the primary provider of global public goods. As a result, there is likely to be more conflict than cooperation between countries, creating a "zero sum game," a "game in which my win is your loss." They explain their rationale:

"Europe is fully occupied for the moment with saving the eurozone. Japan is likewise tied down with complex political and economic problems at home. None of these powers’ governments has the time, resources, or domestic political capital needed for a new bout of international heavy lifting. Meanwhile, there are no credible answers to transnational challenges without the direct involvement of emerging powers such as Brazil, China, and India. Yet these countries are far too focused on domestic development to welcome the burdens that come with new responsibilities abroad.

"We are now living in a G-Zero world, one in which no single country or bloc of countries has the political and economic leverage—or the will—to drive a truly international agenda. The result will be intensified conflict on the international stage over vitally important issues, such as international macroeconomic coordination, financial regulatory reform, trade policy, and climate change. This new order has far-reaching implications for the global economy, as companies around the world sit on enormous stockpiles of cash, waiting for the current era of political and economic uncertainty to pass. Many of them can expect an extended wait."^[23][24]

Writings[link]

Roubini is the author of several books, including:

• Crisis Economics: A Crash Course in the Future of Finance
• Bailouts or Bail-ins? Responding to Financial Crises in Emerging Economies^[25]
• Political Cycles and the Macroeconomy^[26]
• New International Financial Architecture^[27]

Other writings include:

• Europe’s Short Vacation^[28]

Research[link]

Roubini's research interests include:

• international macroeconomics and international finance;
• macroeconomics and fiscal policy;
• political economy;
• growth theory;
• European monetary issues.

Current appointments[link]

• Research Fellow, National Bureau of Economic Research
• Research Fellow, Centre for Economic Policy Research, London, UK
• Member, Bretton Woods Committee
• Member, Council on Foreign Relations Roundtable on the International Economy
• Member, Academic Advisory Committee, Fiscal Affairs Department, International Monetary Fund

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Nouriel Roubini

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Nouriel Roubini

• Nouriel Roubini official website
  • Global EconoMonitor
• Economic Doom blog
• Nouriel Roubini on Twitter
• Who is Roubini?
• Nouriel Roubini at Stern School of Business, New York University
• Profile at Leigh Bureau
• Column archive at Project Syndicate
• Video: Roubini's predictions for 2009 on YouTube

Lloyd Blankfein
Lloyd C. Blankfein at FT Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award 2011
Chairman & CEO of Goldman Sachs
Incumbent
Assumed office 2006
Preceded by	Henry Paulson
Personal details
Born	Lloyd Craig Blankfein (1954-09-20) September 20, 1954 (age 57) Bronx, New York, USA
Nationality	American
Spouse(s)	Laura Jacobs Blankfein
Residence	New York City, New York
Alma mater	Harvard College Harvard Law School
Religion	Judaism

Lloyd Craig Blankfein (born September 20, 1954)^[1] is an American business executive. He is currently the CEO and Chairman of Goldman Sachs. He has been in this position since the May 31, 2006 nomination of former CEO Henry Paulson as Secretary of the Treasury under George W. Bush.

Life and career[link]

Blankfein was born in the Bronx borough of New York City to a Jewish family^[2] and reared in Brooklyn's Linden Houses, part of the New York City Housing Authority.^{[citation needed]} His father was a clerk with the U.S. Postal Service branch in the Manhattan borough of New York City^[3] and his mother was a receptionist. As a boy, he worked as a concession vendor at Yankee Stadium. He received primary and secondary education in the public schools of the New York City Department of Education, and was the valedictorian at Thomas Jefferson High School in 1971. He attended Harvard College, where he lived in Winthrop House, and earned his A.B. in 1975. In 1978, Blankfein received a J.D. degree from Harvard Law School.

Blankfein worked as a corporate tax lawyer for the law firm Donovan, Leisure, Newton & Irvine. In 1981, he joined Goldman's commodities trading arm, J. Aron & Co., as a precious metals salesman in its London office.

He is the Gala Chairman of the Rockefeller family's Asia Society in New York. He serves on the board of the Robin Hood Foundation, a charitable organization seeking to alleviate poverty in New York, as well as on the Board of Overseers of Weill Cornell Medical College.

Goldman CEO[link]

Blankfein earned a total of $54.4 million in 2006 as one of the highest paid executives on Wall Street. His bonus reflected the performance of Goldman Sachs, which reported record net earnings of $9.5 billion. The compensation included a cash bonus of $27.3 million, with the rest paid in stock and options. While CEO of Goldman Sachs Group in 2007, Blankfein earned a total compensation of $53,965,418, which included a base salary of $600,000, a cash bonus of $26,985,474, stocks granted of $15,542,756 and options granted of $10,453,031.^[4]

Blankfein was named as one of "The Most Outrageous CEOs of 2009" by Forbes magazine.^[5] Taking a different position, Financial Times, which named Blankfein as its "2009 Person of the Year," stated: "His bank has stuck to its strengths, unashamedly taken advantage of the low interest rates and diminished competition resulting from the crisis to make big trading profits."^[6] Critics of Goldman Sachs and Wall Street have taken issue with those practices.^[7]

On January 13, 2010, Blankfein testified before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, that he considered Goldman Sachs's role as primarily a market maker, not a creator of the product (i.e., subprime mortgage-related securities).^[8] Goldman Sachs was sued on April 16, 2010 by the SEC for the fraudulent selling of a Synthetic CDO tied to subprime mortgages, a product which Goldman Sachs had created.^[9]

With Blankfein at the helm, Goldman has also been criticized "by lawmakers and pundits for issues from its pay practices to its role in helping Greece mask the size of its debts."^[9] Blankfein testified before Congress in April 2010 at a hearing of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.^{[improper synthesis?]} He said that Goldman Sachs had no moral or legal obligation to inform its clients it was betting against the products which they were buying from Goldman Sachs because it was not acting in a fiduciary role.^[10]

In August 2011, Goldman confirmed that Blankfein had hired high-profile defense lawyer Reid Weingarten.^[11] Weingarten has represented disgraced executives including former WorldCom CEO Bernard Ebbers and former Enron accounting officer Richard Causey.^[12]

In March 2012 a former Goldman executive, Greg Smith, wrote an op-ed for the New York Times titled "Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs," in which he heavily criticized the firm's top leadership and Blankfein in particular, writing "When the history books are written about Goldman Sachs, they may reflect that the current chief executive officer, Lloyd C. Blankfein, and the president, Gary D. Cohn, lost hold of the firm’s culture on their watch."^[13]

Smith's op-ed was criticized by many, particularly because he worked at Goldman for 12 years before deciding to quit due to supposed moral objections, but also shed some light on the firm's internal culture, revealing for example that executives refer to unsophisticated clients as "muppets" and use a strategy of "elephant hunting" to systematically take advantage of their own clients.^[14] While Smith criticized Blankfein for such seemingly unprincipled leadership, particularly after saying in a 2009 interview that the firm was "doing God's work," ^[15] comedian Stephen Colbert defended the Goldman CEO, pointing out that Blankfein never specified which God, and speculating that it was perhaps Shiva, Lord of Destruction.^[16]

Politics[link]

Blankfein is a contributor to mostly Democratic party candidates and donated $4,600 to Democratic Party candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2007.^[17] Goldman employees and their relatives contributed almost a million dollars to Barack Obama's presidential campaign — making it "the company from which Obama raised the most money in 2008" — and Blankfein has visited the White House ten times as of February 2011.^[18] Former Goldman executives who hold senior positions in the Obama administration include Gary Gensler, the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission; Mark Patterson, a former Goldman lobbyist who is chief of staff to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner; and Robert Hormats, the undersecretary of state for economic, energy and agricultural affairs.^[19] With regard to his personal political views, Blankfein has described himself as "a registered Democrat, and a Rockefeller Republican ... conservative on fiscal issues and more liberal on social issues".^[20]

On April 7, 2009, Blankfein recommended guidelines to overhaul executive compensation. According to The New York Times, he said that lessons from the global financial crisis included the need to "apply basic standards to how we compensate people in our industry."^[21]

In November 2009, he declared in an interview, as a banker: "I'm doing God's work."^[22] Several days later he indicated that he regretted that remark and said he had intended it as a joke. He also apologized on behalf of Goldman Sachs to the public for unspecified "things that were clearly wrong and have reason to regret" and which contributed to the financial and economic crisis. The firm announced a 10,000 Small Businesses initiative, committing $500 million to aid American small businesses.^[23]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Profile at Goldman Sachs
• Profile at Bloomberg Businessweek
• Profile at Forbes
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Lloyd Blankfein on Charlie Rose
• Lloyd Blankfein at the Notable Names Database
• Lloyd Blankfein collected news and commentary at The Guardian
• Lloyd Blankfein collected news and commentary at International Business Times
• Lloyd Blankfein collected news and commentary at The New York Times
• Lloyd Blankfein collected news and commentary at The Wall Street Journal
  • Goldman Runs Risks, Reaps Rewards, The New York Times, June 10, 2007
• The Man Goldman Is Banking On 2004 profile from BusinessWeek magazine

Ajit Gulabchand, captured during Building around Bottlenecks: Upgrading Asia's Infrastructure at the World Economic Forum on East Asia in Jakarta, Indonesia, June 2011

Ajit Gulabchand is an Indian industrialist. Gulabchand is currently the chairman and Managing Director of Hindustan Construction Company. Gulabchand serves as chairman of the board of governance at National Institute of Construction Management & Research (NICMAR) and as Chairman of Walchand College of Engineering, Sangli.^[1]

Career[link]

Gulabchand has been a Director of Indian Hume Pipe Co. Ltd., since 1993. He serves as Director of Hindustan Finvest Ltd., HCC Infotech Ltd., Hincon Technoconsult Ltd., Hincon Realty Ltd., Hincon Holdings Ltd., Ucchar Investments Ltd., Western Securities Ltd., LAVASA Corporation Ltd., Motorsports Association of India, Constructmall.com Pvt. Ltd., Champali Garden Pvt. Ltd., Shalaka Investment Pvt. Ltd., Gulabchand Foundation and as independent, non-executive Director of Bajaj Electricals. He is a Founding Member of the World Economic Forum's Disaster Resource Network and a member of the National Council of Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). He is a promoter of the Lavasa township, intended to be India's first new hill station since independence.^[2]

Personal life[link]

Gulabchand is a scion of the Walchand family. Gulabchand took charge of Hindustan Construction Co. Ltd. after managing other large public companies promoted by the family. He also served as the Director of Brabourne Enterprises Ltd. from June 25, 1997 to June 16, 2008 and RPG Life Sciences Ltd. from June 25, 1997 to June 2008. He came from Solapur, where he possesses ancestral property.^[3]

Education[link]

Gulabchand graduated from Sydenham College, Mumbai University with a Bachelor's degree in commerce.^[4]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Hindustan Construction Company. Executive Biography: Ajit Gulabchand