New Silk Route (NSR), the private equity firm co-founded by Rajat Gupta, who has been arrested and indicted in the US on insider trading charges, has formed an advisory board comprising international business experts Nina Shapiro, Herbert A. Henzler and Supratim Bose.
The advisory board is to help identify global opportunities for NSR’s portfolio companies. These would include potential business partnerships, strategic transactions and public offerings on exchanges in Asia, Europe and North America, stated the firm. NSR expects to appoint more individuals to the advisory board in the coming months.
Gupta is accused of providing tips to Raj Rajaratnam, the billionaire hedge fund tycoon who has since been sentenced in the US to a 11-year jail term for insider trading.
Shapiro served as vice president, finance, and treasurer of the International Finance Corporation. Henzler is special advisor to the chairman of Credit Suisse Group. Bose, who had a 28-year career at Johnson & Johnson, has also been recently appointed at Boston Scientific Corporation as executive VP and president, Asia-Pacific.
Parag Saxena, founder and CEO of New Silk Route, said, “The purpose of the strategic advisory board will be to provide guidance and identify potential business opportunities for our investments in markets across the globe.”
“European and US companies have a strong desire to capitalise on the economic growth potential in India and the West Asia,” said Henzler. “This has the potential to make NSR’s portfolio companies extremely appealing as business partners across multiple industries.”
NSR manages $1.4 billion and has invested about $750 million in 14 portfolio companies. “We expect that a four-year period from the fund’s closing in late 2008 is a reasonable time to expect exits,” said Saxena in an earlier interview with Business Standard.