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

Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev
Born	3rd September,1957 Mysore, Karnataka
Nationality	Indian
Occupation	Yogic Guru

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Jaggi Vasudev

Jaggi Vasudev (Kannada: ಸಧ್ಗುರು ಜಗ್ಗಿ ವಾಸುದೇವ್ Tamil: சத்குரு ஜக்கி வாசுதேவ் Hindi: सदगुरु जग्गी वासुदेव Telugu: సద్గురు జగ్గి వాసుదేవ్ ) also known as Sadhguru, is an Indian yogi and mystic. He founded the Isha Foundation, a non-profit organization which offers yoga programs around the world, including India, United States, England, Lebanon, Singapore, Canada, Malaysia, Uganda and Australia. The Foundation is also involved in various social and community development activities, which have resulted in the Foundation being granted special consultative status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations.^[1]

Early life[link]

Sadhguru was born as Jagadish Vasudev on 3 September 1957 in Mysore, Karnataka, India. His father was a doctor. At the age of 11, Vasudev began yogic practices such as asanas and pranayama under the tutelage of Raghavendra Rao more commonly referred to as Malladihalli Swami. Sadhguru excelled at school and was a very bright student. He graduated with a degree in English Literature from the Mysore University.

Spiritual experience[link]

At the age of twenty-five, he underwent a deep spiritual experience which was to change the course of his future life. One afternoon, Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev went to the Chamundi hills in Mysore and sat on a rock with his eyes wide open. Suddenly, he had an out of body experience. He felt as if he was not in his body anymore, rather spread out everywhere, in the rocks, in the trees, in the earth. When he came back to his normal state, it was late in the evening. He wondered if he had hallucinated, but in the days that followed, this experience recurred and each time it left him in a state of utter bliss. This episode entirely changed his way of life. Jaggi Vasudev decided to dedicate his entire life to the sharing of those experiences.^{[citation needed]}

Isha Foundation[link]

Saplings being readied for transportation at a PGH nursery.

Sadhguru established Isha Foundation, a non-religious, non-profit organization entirely run by volunteers. The Isha Yoga Center near Coimbatore was founded in 1992, and hosts a series of programs to heighten self-awareness through yoga.

Social initiatives[link]

He also founded Project GreenHands (PGH), a grassroots ecological initiative which was awarded the highest Indian environmental award, the Indira Gandhi Paryavaran Puraskar, by the Government of India in June 2010;^[2] Action for Rural Rejuvenation (ARR), a program aimed towards improving the overall health and quality of life of the rural poor; and Isha Vidhya, an educational initiative, which aims to raise the level of education and literacy in rural India.

Dhyanalinga[link]

In 1999, Jaggi Vasudev completed the consecration of the Dhyanalinga yogic temple, which offers a meditative space that does not ascribe to any particular faith or belief system.^[3] A large ellipsoidal dome covers the sanctum sanctorum. The dome was constructed using only bricks and cement stabilized mud mortar without, steel or concrete.^[4] The dome is 76 feet in diameter and 33 feet in height. The lingam is 13 feet, 9 inches in height and made of high density black granite. The Sarva Dharma Sthamba, located at the front entrance, functions as an icon of singularity, with the sculptural reliefs and symbols of Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Jainism, Taoism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Buddhism, and Shinto inscribed as a universal welcome.^[5]

Yoga programs[link]

The programs offered by Sadhguru are offered under the umbrella of Isha Yoga. The word Isha means the formless divine.^[6] Isha Yoga's flagship program is 'Inner Engineering' where individuals are initiated into meditation and pranayam and the Shambhavi Mahamudra.^[7] He is also conducting yoga classes for the corporate leadership to introduce them to what he calls "inclusive economics," which he says introduces a sense of compassion and inclusiveness into today's economic scenario.^[8][9]

Sadhguru also regularly conducts Mahasathsangs in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka that include discourses, meditations and question and answer sessions with the audience. These Mahasathsangs are also used as platforms to encourage tree-planting activities.^[10] He also takes spiritual aspirants on annual yatras to Mount Kailash and the Himalayas. The Kailash Yatra led by Sadhguru is among the largest groups to make the trip to Kailash, with 514 pilgrims attending the journey in 2010.^[11][12]

Participation in global forums[link]

He was a delegate to the United Nations Millennium World Peace Summit - ^[13] and a participant at the World Economic Forum in 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009.^[14]

He was a participant in the 2006 documentary film ONE: The Movie.

Bibliography[link]

English[link]

• Encounter the Enlightened, ISBN 81-86685-60-X
• Mystic's Musings, ISBN 81-86685-59-6
• Joy 24x7, ISBN 978-81-7992-914-8
• Pebbles of Wisdom, ISBN 978-81-7992-952-0
• The Mystic Eye, ISBN 81-7992-883-7
• Essential Wisdom from a Spiritual Master, ISBN 81-7992-882-9
• Flowers On The Path, ISBN 81-87910-05-4
• Himalayan Lust, ISBN 978-81-8495-076-2
• Eternal Echoes: The Sacred Sounds Through the Mystic, ISBN 81-87910-02-X
• Dhyanalinga: The Silent Revolution, ISBN 81-87910-00-3
• Dhyanalinga: The Eternal Form, ISBN 81-87910-12-1
• Circus of The Mind, ISBN 81-87910-10-0
• Unleashing The Mind, ISBN 81-87910-08-9
• Good And Bad Divides The World, ISBN 81-87910-07-0
• Enlightenment: What It Is, ISBN 81-87910-06-2
• Sacred Space For Self-transformation, ISBN 81-87910-09-7
• Ancient Technology For The Modern Mind, ISBN 81-87910-11-9

Tamil[link]

• Sey... Seyyathe! ISBN 81-8476-288-4
• Athanaikum Asaipadu ISBN 81-89780-05-0
• Moondravathu Konam ISBN 81-8476-155-9
• Unakkagave Oru Ragasiyam ISBN 81-89936-24-2
• Konjam Amudham Konjam Visham ISBN 81-8476-134-4
• Aayiram Jannal ISBN 81-8476-226-6
• Anandha Alai

Hindi[link]

• Ek Aadhyatmik Guru Ka Alaukik Gyaan ISBN 81-8495-142-4
• Mrutyu Ek Kalpana Hai ISBN 978-81-288-2969-7
• Srushti se srushta tak ISBN 978-81-288-2970-3
• Aatm-Gyan : Aakhir Hai Kya ISBN 978-81-288-3495-0, {First Edition in August-2011}

Kannada[link]

• Gnyanodaya ISBN 81-7286-606-8
• Karunege Bhedavilla ISBN 81-7286-591-0

Telugu[link]

• Sadhguru Sannidhilo ISBN 81-87910-01-7

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Subramaniam, Arundhathi (2010). Sadhguru, More than a life. New Delhi: Penguin Ananda. ISBN 978-0-670-08512-5. 

External links[link]

• Sadhguru.org
• Isha Foundation - Home Page

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