Past success against insider traders might actually hurt not help the case against Rajat Gupta. US prosecutors took down Galleon Group founder Raj Rajaratnam with wiretaps and nailed arbitrageur Ivan Boesky with a cooperating witness. But they may have neither to support their case against the former McKinsey boss and Goldman Sachs director. Circumstantial evidence could be enough to win, though juries also could just as easily be conditioned now to expect more.

Great expectations

Business Standard

The US Securities and Exchange Commission may prove at least as wimpy with lawmakers as it is with their donors. Thanks to a law that's in the works, the regulator will soon have far greater license to crack down on congressional insider traders. But new research suggests enforcers go easier on bosses of companies that make political contributions. If even donors are shielded, lawmakers themselves stand to get off lightly.

Inside job

Corporate political donations don&rsquo;t really need policing on behalf of shareholders. As election-season spending soars, campaign finance largess from companies large and small has become a hot-button issue in the United States. The Securities and Exchange Commission is under heavy pressure to make firms disclose their contributions. But many already are, thanks to investor vigilance. A blanket rule would be an unnecessary venture into politics for the regulator.

Office politics

Greedy law schools may have taught their jobless graduates a little too well. Some disgruntled lawyers are suing their alma maters for exaggerating employment prospects. That seems fitting for a litigious lot, with buyers&rsquo; remorse over a $120,000 education. The lousy job market isn&rsquo;t the schools&rsquo; fault, but training these cheeky legal eagles to spread their wings may be.

Lesson learned

Google&rsquo;s antitrust problem is actually about privacy. They seem like separate issues &mdash; Google has argued as much &mdash;but the internet search giant&rsquo;s market dominance is largely fuelled by its access to users&rsquo; personal data. Limiting that could give competition a useful jolt.

Saving Private Google

US prosecutors have gained an early edge in Raj Gupta&rsquo;s insider trading trial. Judge Jed Rakoff largely adopted their version of a preliminary jury instruction a week after allowing them to introduce wiretap evidence. The former McKinsey &amp; Co boss and Goldman Sachs director hasn&rsquo;t put on his defence yet. But he&rsquo;ll need some breaks soon if he&rsquo;s going to beat the insider trading rap.

Tipping points

The high risk of taking the stand in person could pay off for Rajat Gupta. The smart money says the former McKinsey boss and Goldman Sachs director won&rsquo;t testify at his insider trading trial, which starts on Monday in New York. But the prosecution&rsquo;s case is largely circumstantial, leaving him plenty of room to explain.

Tipping the odds

An Oracle lawsuit is giving Google a golden opportunity to regain its non-evil image. The search giant has been thumped lately on privacy, antitrust and governance grounds. But it looks almost virtuous in a patent spat with Larry Ellison&rsquo;s Oracle.

Larry v Larry

A bribery case against Walmart could be tougher than it looks. US law prohibits companies from making under-the-table payoffs to get new contracts from foreign officials. But the mega-retailer&rsquo;s Mexican unit allegedly greased only low-level palms to grow an existing business. That&rsquo;s arguably not covered, and the feds should beware bending an already controversial law to punish what may technically just be unethical.

Greasy palms

Attention all patent lawyers: Y&rsquo;all better Deutsch sprechen. The smartphone wars are moving from eastern Texas to western Germany. The shift is occurring because courts in Mannheim and other cities nearby allow the likes of Apple, Google and Microsoft to block rivals without proving damages. The court rulings can also carry global weight. The transatlantic legal arbitrage, however, may be hurting competition.

The Mannheim Rocket

Rajat Gupta&rsquo;s insider trading sentence is deserved but incomplete. The former McKinsey boss and Goldman Sachs and Procter &amp; Gamble director asked to pay his debt to society by helping impoverished Rwandans. Instead he got two years in the slammer. His request oozed chutzpah but made a useful point. The US justice system should punish crooks like him while also exploiting their skills.

Out of Africa

Being Apple means (almost) never having to say you&rsquo;re sorry. The tech giant apologised to customers for releasing a flawed maps application. But it bristled at a UK court order that the company publicly admit as false its accusation that Samsung Electronics had infringed on the iPad. Now the British judges are demanding strict compliance.

Love story

It&rsquo;s almost criminal that the snitch will walk in a probe involving SAC Capital. Mathew Martoma, an ex-trader at Steve Cohen&rsquo;s $14 billion hedge fund firm, faces possible jail time for alleged insider trading. But the doctor accused of giving him secret data doesn&rsquo;t &mdash; he won&rsquo;t be charged after agreeing to help prosecutors. Flipping suspects to land bigger game is standard. Going easy on serious wrongdoing shouldn&rsquo;t be.

Doctoring the law

Rajat Gupta has gone down, but insider trading may not. The guilty verdicts against the former McKinsey boss and Goldman Sachs and Procter &amp; Gamble director should scare the bejeezus out of corporate America and Wall Street. But until the rules against passing privileged information are clearly defined and miscreants truly fear getting caught, the case&rsquo;s deterrence value will be limited.

Inside out

Blowing through the debt ceiling may be the best of (US) President Barack Obama&rsquo;s bad options. He has to meet US obligations, and he can&rsquo;t cut spending or raise taxes without Congress&rsquo;s say-so. The only choice is to borrow more &mdash; but some lawmakers want to stop him from doing that. Legally, his safest bet is to ignore them.

Dunce cap

David Sokol&rsquo;s escape from an insider-trading probe further fogs an already hazy law. Warren Buffett&rsquo;s fallen heir-apparent was a prime investigation target for buying $10 million of Lubrizol shares shortly before Berkshire Hathaway acquired the company for $9 billion.

Sokol haze

Congress should push for mandatory gun insurance. Firearm ownership is a US constitutional right. But as last week&rsquo;s massacre again demonstrated, it comes at a cost. Requiring liability coverage could be one way to keep the most dangerous weapons from unstable hands without infringing the law.

Second way forward

Criminal charges aren&rsquo;t the corporate death sentences many people think. The demise of accounting firm Arthur Andersen made US prosecutors skittish about indicting the likes of HSBC Holdings, which skirted charges with a record $1.9 billion settlement announced on Tuesday. But new research suggests convictions don&rsquo;t cause company failures. Banks may be special cases, but enforcers should question their assumptions.

Crime still pays

Pharma has landed a double blow against the American government. The US Court of Appeals in New York has ruled that a drug salesman was exercising his right to free speech by pitching a narcolepsy drug as effective against insomnia, chronic fatigue and other conditions the Food and Drug Administration had not approved. If the Supreme Court upholds this decision, companies will pay fewer multi-billion dollar fines and useless healthcare spending will increase.

Bad prescription

Apple may bury the hatchet with Google - just not quite yet. It&rsquo;s no shock their chiefs, Tim Cook and Larry Page, are talking. The iPhone maker&rsquo;s sweeping US patent win over Samsung is a blow to the search giant, too. But the rivals&rsquo; clashing business models make peace difficult.

Tim and Larry's excellent adventure

The US pharmaceutical industry can't sugarcoat its generic drug deals any longer. Pfizer's Wyeth unit is the latest company to sustain its monopoly over a patented medication by handing a rival exclusive, but delayed, rights to a generic version. That's an anticompetitive quid pro quo, even if cash didn't change hands.

Bitter pill

One of the opportunities identified by Accel under the consumer theme is 'Bharat', where startups cater to the top 30 per cent of households in India's Tier-2+ regions

(From left) Abhinav Chaturvedi and Barath Shankar Subramanian, Partners at Accel

Here's a quick capsule of the best of Business Standard's opinion pages today for your quick reading.

high risk

Britain's Opposition Conservative Party is leading calls for Prime Minister Keir Starmer to scrap government plans for an official definition of Islamophobia over fears it would restrict free speech and action against wrongdoing.
Shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick said this weekend that a "false label" of Islamophobia had hampered investigations into the child abuse grooming gang scandal involving men of Pakistani heritage.
It comes as The Daily Telegraph newspaper claims that the Labour Party government is considering a formal definition of anti-Muslim discrimination.
The government should drop its plans for such a deeply flawed definition of Islamophobia, Jenrick told the newspaper.
Throughout the grooming gang scandal the false label of Islamophobia was used to silence people. It appears that the government has learnt nothing and is determined to press ahead with a definition that will have a chilling effect on freedom of speech, he said.
In a social media post, the Tory M

Keir Starmer, UK PM, Prime Minister Starmer

JPMorgan Chase & Co., the largest US bank, looks to be next in line

Bank

Bangladesh's interim government on Sunday cancelled a planned training programme for 50 judges and judicial officers in India, scrapping a previous notification.
The notification has been cancelled, a law ministry spokesman said without elaborating.
The Daily Star newspaper, however, reported the cancellation came in compliance with a directive from Bangladesh's Supreme Court.
The cancellation order came a day after the state-run Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha reported that 50 lower judiciary judges would undergo a one-day training programme from February 10 at the National Judicial Academy and the State Judicial Academy in Madhya Pradesh.
The trainee judges selected under the programme were district and sessions judge or its equivalent officers, additional district and sessions judge, joint district judge, senior assistant judge and assistant judge.
The Indian government was supposed to bear all the expenses for the training programmes.
India and Bangladesh have witnessed strained

India Bangladesh, India, Bangladesh

Jagdeep Singh, the former CEO of Quantumscape, has an annual salary of Rs 17,500 crore ($2.06 billion), which surpasses the revenue of several large corporations in the world

Jagdeep Singh

HDFC Bank's LDR was around 87 per cent pre-merger. Following the merger, its LDR went up to 110 per cent

HDFC Bank

Travel booking major OYO has launched a new check-in policy for partner hotels, starting from Meerut, introducing guidelines effective this year whereby unmarried couples will no longer be welcome to check in.
Under the revised policy, all couples will be asked to present valid proof of relationship at the time of check-in, including for bookings made online. OYO has empowered its partner hotels' discretion to decline couple bookings based on their judgment, aligning with local social sensibility, the company said.
OYO has given the directive to its partner hotels in Meerut to ensure this with immediate effect. Based on ground feedback, the company may expand this to more cities, people familiar with the policy change said.
"OYO has received feedback in the past from civil society groups especially in Meerut urging action to address this issue. Additionally, residents from few other cities have petitioned for disallowing unmarried couples to check-in at OYO hotels," they said.
Pawa

OYO, Oyo rooms, Oyo app, Oyo logo

Subsidy to support 72,300 fast charging stations across the country

EV, ELECTRIC VEHICLE

The rupee has been hovering above Rs 85 mark vis-a-vis the US dollar in the recent past

medicine

Stock Market Today: The Nifty FMCG Index is currently trading within a crucial range of 58,050 - 55,675, and any breakout above or below this range will likely trigger significant directional momentum

stock market

Here are the best of Business Standard's opinion pieces for today

economic growth

Apple has agreed to pay USD 95 million to settle a lawsuit accusing the privacy-minded company of deploying its virtual assistant Siri to eavesdrop on people using its iPhone and other trendy devices.
The proposed settlement filed Tuesday in an Oakland, California, federal court would resolve a 5-year-old lawsuit revolving around allegations that Apple surreptitiously activated Siri to record conversations through iPhones and other devices equipped with the virtual assistant for more than a decade.
The alleged recordings occurred even when people didn't seek to activate the virtual assistant with the trigger words, Hey, Siri." Some of the recorded conversations were then shared with advertisers in an attempt to sell their products to consumers more likely to be interested in the goods and services, the lawsuit asserted.
The allegations about a snoopy Siri contradicted Apple's long-running commitment to protect the privacy of its customers  a crusade that CEO Tim Cook has often frame

Apple Siri

Long build up is seen in the Bank Nifty futures where we have seen 3 per cent rise in the open interest with it rising by 1.07 per cent

Market, BSE, NSE, NIfty, Stock Market, investment, IPO

FBI has confirmed that the attacker Shamsud Din Jabba was lone wolf terrorist with no known accomplices

US flag, US, united states

A lot has changed. Both nations are more than a little concerned about how they will revive slowing growth

Reynolds Holding

Reynolds Holding

Page 3 - Reynolds Holding

Great expectations

Inside job

Office politics

Lesson learned

Saving Private Google

Tipping points

Tipping the odds

Larry v Larry

Greasy palms

The Mannheim Rocket

Out of Africa

Love story

Doctoring the law

Inside out

Dunce cap

Sokol haze

Second way forward

Crime still pays

Bad prescription

Tim and Larry's excellent adventure

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In this Section

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Accel's $650 mn India fund to focus on AI, fintech startups, manufacturing

Best of BS Opinion: Risks and Outcomes in an Uncertain Future

UK Oppn wants PM Keir Starmer to scrap plans for Islamophobia definition

Wall Street's top banks just quit a once popular net-zero alliance

Bangladesh cancels scheduled judges' training in India amid strained ties

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Indian-origin CEO is world's highest paid person, earns Rs 48 crore per day

HDFC Bank's LDR falls below 100% for the first time after merger

Unmarried couples no longer welcome, OYO changes check-in policy

Govt to switch on massive subsidy to supercharge EV infrastructure

Weakening rupee may not be shot in the arm for India's pharma exporters