A front-page news article in today's Wall Street Journal tries to make it sound like Rajat Gupta was somehow insulting his then-colleagues on the board of Goldman Sachs by calling them opportunistic.
Says the Journal: "the tapes also have revealed what some of capitalism's chieftains have been saying about their colleagues and associates behind their backs. It isn't pretty....A former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. director calls his fellow board members an 'opportunistic group.'"
More: "Mr. Gupta called fellow Goldman directors 'an opportunistic group,' saying that though they believed commercial banking was a low-return business, they might buy Wachovia Corp. if it were 'a good deal.' Goldman, which didn't buy Wachovia, declined to comment."
To me this doesn't sound like an insult, as the Journal would have it, but like praise. As money manager Seth Klarman put it in a recent letter: "Price is perhaps the single most important criterion in sound investment decision making. Every security or asset is a 'buy' at one price, a 'hold' at a higher price, and a 'sell' at some still higher price."
