A casual Wall Street tip seems to have turned into a fascinating investing theory around the growing dominance of Indian-origin CEOs in the US corporate sector.
American billionaire investor Michael Milken, who is one of the most influential names on Wall Street with a net worth of over $7 billion, had, in an interview with Elad Gil, said that whenever a US company replaced an American-born CEO with an Indian-born executive, he would buy their stocks. Milken also added that he was “thinking about hiring an Indian-born CEO for his own operations”.
Now, the interview uploaded on Gil’s YouTube channel in August 2025, has resurfaced and is being backed by data.
Milken, in the interview, said it was a theory devised by him and he had never backtested the idea. Indian-origin investor and tech entrepreneur Debarghya “Deedy” Das decided to backtest Milken’s theory across the past 15 years. After the analysis, Das claimed that investing in companies after they appointed India-born CEOs would have turned investments into nearly 50 times their value, delivering annual compounded returns of around 30% compared to the S&P 500’s roughly 14%.
Backtesting is checking how a trading strategy would have performed in the past by using market data. It helps traders see if a strategy could have made profits or losses before using real money.
Deedy posted the analysis online, and it quickly drew attention, especially because many of America’s most powerful technology firms are currently led by executives of Indian origin.
America’s multinational technology conglomerate Microsoft is headed by Satya Nadella, the parent company of Google, Alphabet is led by Sundar Pichai, Adobe by Shantanu Narayen, IBM by Arvind Krishna, and Palo Alto Networks by Nikesh Arora. Mastercard, Micron Technology, and several other American giants have also witnessed major growth under India-born executives.
BIG RETURNS FROM MARKETS IF INVESTED IN COMPANIES HEADED BY INDIAN-ORIGIN CEOs
According to Deedy’s analysis on the basis of Milken’s remark, some of the strongest-performing stocks in his hypothetical portfolio included Arista Networks, Micron Technology, Enphase Energy, Microsoft, Alphabet (Google), and Adobe. Most of these companies are or have been headed by executives of Indian origin.
The hypothetical portfolio reportedly turned every $1 invested into nearly $58 over the period of 15 years, while the S&P 500 benchmark would have grown the same amount to only about $7.7.
The analysis post by Deedy drew millions of views on X and reignited debate over the growing influence of Indian-origin executives in some of America’s biggest companies, particularly in the technology sector.
However, Deedy later issued an important clarification, stressing that the findings did not necessarily prove Indian-born CEOs were directly responsible for superior stock performance.
DID MICHEAL MILKEN GAIN FROM INVESTING IN COMPANIES HEADED BY INDIAN-BORN CEOs?
While Michael Milken joked that investors should “buy the stock” whenever an American company appoints an India-born CEO, there is no verified evidence that he actually built an investment strategy around Indian-origin executives or made big profits specifically from such companies.
Milken’s comments were largely observational and often made in conversations highlighting the success of leaders like Satya Nadella at Microsoft, Sundar Pichai at Alphabet, and Shantanu Narayen at Adobe. Milken acknowledged that he had “never formally backtested the theory”.
Publicly available records, investment disclosures, and financial reports do not show Milken systematically investing in companies because they were led by Indian-origin CEOs. His wealth and investment empire were built through diversified investments in junk bonds, private equity, hedge funds, venture capital, and broader financial markets over several decades.
Milken remains a legendary and a bit of a controversial figure on Wall Street. Often called the “Junk Bond King”, he revolutionised high-risk corporate financing in the 1980s and helped shape modern American finance before later facing securities fraud charges.
Despite controversies, Milken’s influence on investment culture and financial markets remains enormous.
INDIAN-ORIGIN CEOs DOMINATE THE BOARDROOMS OF AMERICA
Several Indian-origin executives in the US come from engineering and technology backgrounds, often rising through global firms after years of working across multiple markets and management structures. The dominance of Indian engineers, technology and management professionals in Silicon Valley during the software boom (late1990s-2000s) also created a pipeline of future corporate leaders.
Data of America’s biggest multinational corporations shows extraordinary growth during the tenures of India-born executives, helping fuel the idea behind billionaire investor Michael Milken’s famous investing rule.
At Microsoft, Satya Nadella took charge as CEO of the company in 2014, which was still heavily dependent on Windows and traditional software. Microsoft’s revenue then stood at around $86.8 billion, with a market capitalisation of roughly $300 billion. Under Nadella, the company transformed into a cloud and AI giant. By financial year 2023-24, revenue had surged to nearly $245 billion, while Microsoft’s market value crossed $3 trillion.
Alphabet witnessed a similar rise under Sundar Pichai. Around 2015, Google’s parent company generated roughly $75 billion in revenue and carried a market value of about $500 billion. Under Pichai, Alphabet aggressively expanded YouTube, cloud computing, and AI initiatives. By 2025, the company’s revenues had climbed past $400 billion.
Adobe’s also witnessed a similar transformation under Shantanu Narayen. Narayen took charge in 2007, when Adobe was still dependent on boxed software sales and generated around $3 billion in annual revenue. Narayen shifted the company toward the Creative Cloud subscription model, turning Adobe into a high-margin software-as-a-service powerhouse. Revenues have now crossed $23 billion, while the company’s valuation soared beyond $300 billion at its peak.
After Deedy’s analysis sparked widespread debate online, he issued an important clarification to tone down the excitement surrounding the findings. He stressed that the results did not necessarily establish that Indian-born CEOs were directly responsible for the superior stock market performance.
The big monetary returns might not necessarily be because the CEOs were Indian-origin, as many of them happened to lead high-growth technology companies that have performed remarkably well in global markets over the past decade.
However, the result of the analysis is striking. At a time when Indian-origin leaders are increasingly shaping global business, the idea that Wall Street investors could have built a winning strategy by tracking India-born CEOs says something bigger about the contribution of Indian talent in the US and the global economy.
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