Question of the Week RESULTS: Gupta Hardest-Fallen Goldman Alum

Losing big piles of investor money and putting your firm out of business is pretty bad, but violating federal securities laws is worse, according to readers of peHUB.

In fact, Rajat Gupta, a former Goldman board member indicted last week for insider trading, attracted twice as many votes in our Question of the Week as did Jon Corzine, a onetime Goldman CEO whose most recent venture, MF Global, filed for bankruptcy this week. That is a 61% to 29% margin, for you quants out there.

The other competitors in our horse-race question, on which Goldman alumnus has fallen the hardest, were far back in the pack. J.C. Flowers, who went on to found his own financial services-oriented fund (you can imagine how that has been working out) drew 5% of the votes in our survey, while John Thain, who presided over the demise of Merrill Lynch, attracted 4%. Robert Rubin, polled at less than 1%, which is a good thing in this context.

Steve Bills is a senior editor at Buyouts Magazine. Any opinions expressed here are entirely his own. Follow him on Twitter @Steve_Bills. Follow Buyouts tweets @Buyouts. For information on how to subscribe, contact Greg Winterton at greg.winterton@thomsonreuters.com.