Source

Two jawans and a policeman were also injured in the encounter that started yesterday in Mir Mohalla Dadasir, 40 kms from here.

The gunbattle broke out when militants hiding in a house fired on a joint search party of police and troops of 42 Rashtriya Rifles in Mir Mohalla Dadasir.

The captain is the second Army officer to be killed in an encounter in Kashmir in less than a fortnight. On February 24, Captain Devinder Singh Jass was killed in a gunbattle with militants in Sopore.

Sub divisional magistrate said at least 65 people have been killed in the tragedy in Mangarh area of Kunda town, about 180 km from here.

Sixty bodies had been recovered and more could have been killed in the tragedy, said Additional Director General of Police (Law and Order) Brij Lal, according to IANS.

Some of the injured were reported to be in critical condition.

The stampede occurred after the main gate of the temple collapsed. More than 30 people are reported to be trapped in the debris.

Most of the trapped people are women and children. There was a huge crowd gathered at the temple to attend a ‘bhandara’ (luncheon) of Swami Kripaluji Maharaj.

Source

And the Samvidhan Gaurav Yatra (Parade of Pride for the Constitution) which he was leading through the streets of Surendranagar, over 100km from Ahmedabad, was taking place two days before the 60th anniversary of India’s adoption of the Constitution.

Source

Portions of the message, however, seemed a little mixed up.

Modi urged Gujaratis to learn more about the Constitution and take pride in Ambedkar.

“Ambedkar’s soul will surely bless us for this unique yatra,” he declared as his pageant resonated with Hindu religious chants and patriotic songs.

Ambedkar, however, had rejected Hinduism. Also, the religion he had embraced, Buddhism, does not believe in an abiding soul.

Modi, accused of presiding over the massacre of Muslims eight years ago, saluted the Constitution as the “greatest unifying force in a land of diversities and different faiths”.

Many listeners may have wondered some more if they remembered how K.S. Sudarshan, former chief of the RSS to which Modi owes his rise, had scoffed that the Constitution was an “enlarged and revised edition of the Government of India Act 1935”.

A Modi aide explained the yatra’s objective. He said Surendranagar had witnessed the highest number of atrocities on Dalits who, unlike elsewhere in Gujarat, were gearing to fight back politically.

The BSP’s labour arm has been working among them for some time but no political party has seriously tried to draft the community’s support. Modi, the aide said, wanted to be the first.

“He has read the signals correctly. The Dalits of Saurashtra are getting increasingly politicised and if we don’t watch out, the Congress may get their votes or else the BSP may acquire a foothold,” a government source said.

In 1996 he was offered to lead the federal government as PM in a left-of-centre coalition, but his party chose to support it from the outside.Mr Basu described his party’s decision decision not to join the coalition as a “historic blunder.”

Our correspondent says Jyoti Basu leaves behind a controversial and mixed legacy. Though he undertook crucial land reforms in West Bengal state and empowered the peasantry, the state slid into industrial stagnation and was wracked by radical trade unionism under his rule.Businesses fled West Bengal, unemployment rose, and industrial unrest was rife, our correspondent says.Jyoty Basu was often described as a Fabian socialist rather than an orthodox communist.

Source

A decision on possible further action would depend on the replies to the show cause notices, top army officials said.Army chief Gen Deepak Kapoor issued the directions in this regard to Adjutant General Lt Gen Mukesh Sabharwal this evening, top Army officials said here.Lt Gen Prakash, who retires on January 31, will get 30 days to reply to the show cause notice.

However, under Army law, Lt Gen Prakash will be liable to any punishment, disciplinary action or administrative action up to three years after his retirement. “Only after the replies are received by the Army headquarters would a decision on whether administrative or disciplinary action should be taken in the case be arrived at,” the officials said.

Lt Gen Prakash, along with Lt Gen P K Rath, Lt Gen Ramesh Halgali and Maj Gen P Sen were found “culpable” by an Army probe in the sale of a 70-acre land to a private realtor on the basis of a No Objection Certificate issued by the Sukna military station.

The massive blast Saturday in Hegang city in frigid Heilongjiang province erupted at night when some 500 miners were working below ground. Most escaped, but 104 were confirmed dead and an additional four were missing and feared dead, the official Xinhua news agency reported Monday.

The explosion at the Xinxing coal mine, which belongs to the state-owned Heilongjiang Longmei Mining Holding Group, was the deadliest in China’s mining industry in two years, and has highlighted how heavy demand for power-generating coal comes at a high human cost.

At the gates of the mining company’s offices, family members and friends confronted mining officials with questions until some of them were escorted into an office by police, security guards and other officials.

“Why don’t you tell us anything?” one shouted. “Not even a phone call!”

Inside the room, Liu Shujiu, whose 38-year-old husband Zhang Shulai was among the victims, broke down in tears as she sat in a chair

“Why haven’t they told us anything?” she wailed. “We had to hear from others at the mine.”

A mine official, who — like many Chinese officials — refused to give his name for fear of government reprisals, held up a list of miners’ names and tried to calm the crowd: “There are certainly dead. You don’t take it well, we know. But there’s a process. I feel as bad as you,” he said, pausing before admitting that the delay in informing family members was a mistake.

“In this, we were wrong,” he said.

Three of the Americans died in southern Afghanistan on Sunday, the statement said. Two of them were killed by a bomb attack and the third in a separate firefight.

The military said the fourth U.S. service member died in the east Monday in a bomb explosion.

The deaths bring the number of Americans killed in Afghanistan in November to 15. October was the deadliest month for U.S. troops in the eight-year war, with 58 dead.

Meanwhile, Afghan officials said three Afghan army soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb in southern Helmand province.

The Interior Ministry said the bombing occurred on Sunday in Musa Qala district. It did not give further details and it was not clear if there was any connection between the Afghan deaths and the American deaths.

Source

While there is no definite proclamation of how the end of the world 2012 will happen, those who have studied this calendar claim that the long calendar was created in order to correspond with a long term astronomical prediction by the Mayan people. This has led some to believe that this end of the world scenario will play out in a manner that has something to do with something from beyond this world. While this correlation to something that is going on in outer space is not a definite thing, for some it comes from a basic understanding of Mayan culture and their unique understanding of astronomical phenomena and planetary alignments.

The Long Count set its “zero date” at a point in the past marking the end of the previous world and the beginning of the current one, which corresponds to either 11 or 13 August 3114 BC in the Proleptic Gregorian calendar, depending on the formula used.[12] Unlike the 52-year calendar round still used today among the Maya, the Long Count was linear, rather than cyclical, and kept time roughly in units of 20, so 20 days made a uinal, 18 uinals, or 360 days, made a tun, 20 tuns made a k’atun, and 20 k’atuns, or 144,000 days, made up a b’ak’tun. So, for example, the Mayan date of 8.3.2.10.15 represents 8 b’ak’tuns, 3 k’atuns, 2 tuns, 10 uinals and 15 days since creation. Many Mayan inscriptions have the count shifting to a higher order after 13 b’ak’tuns. Today, the most widely accepted correlations of the end of the thirteenth b’ak’tun, or Mayan date 13.0.0.0.0, with the Western calendar are either December 21 or December 23, 2012.

Pokhrel, whose government has been urged by Indian animal rights activist Maneka Gandhi to intervene at the Gadhimai Fair in Bara district along the Indo-Nepal border where this year the temple authorities have announced they would kill at least 500,000 birds and beasts, said while he personally admired Maneka Gandhi, the government would not impose its will on any community in religious matters.

However, he said the government would keep vigil along the quarantine posts on the Indo-Nepal border to discourage the smuggling of animals from India into Nepal for the sacrifice and would take action against people guilty of violating the law.

They have shattered the myth that the ‘free market’ policies launched in 1991, including liberalisation and deregulation, have promoted genuine competition and a clean relationship between business and government.The clients include 185 Fortune-500 corporations. Satyam specialised in engineering and product development, supply chain management, business process quality, business intelligence, enterprise integration, and infrastructure management.

‘It seems unlikely that Satyam is a unique exception, a one-off case, as is being claimed by many industrialists and chambers of commerce,’ says Jay Bhattacharjee, a highly experienced Delhi-based capital markets analyst. ‘Corporate malfeasance and outright fraud is widely prevalent in Indian industry.’

Two of accounting company’s directors have since been arrested. They failed to verify the authenticity of the bank documents pertaining to cash reserves and balances presented to them by Satyam’s management.

The Andhra Pradesh Cabinet, which met here today under the chairmanship of Chief Minister K Rosaiah, accepted the Central Bureau of Investigation’s (CBI) request for setting up such a court.

The CBI, which took over the investigations into the Satyam scandal in February this year, has filed a chargesheet against B Ramalinga Raju and others in the 14th additional chief metropolitan magistrate court.

The CBI deputy inspector general of police in a letter to the AP government and the AP High Court had requested that a special court be established to try those involved in the corporate fraud.

As the metropolitan magistrate courts and the additional chief metropolitan magistrate courts are overburdened with cases, the High Court recommended to the state government that a special court be set up.

According to the CBI, there are 433 witnesses, 1532 documents and 62 material objects in the case. The chargesheet itself runs into about 65,000 pages.

The state Cabinet approved the CBI request as well as the High Court recommendation and decided to establish the special court, a senior minister said after the meeting.

Source : Business Standard

The government has, in recent weeks, tightened its control over the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (Icai) diluting Agarwal’s own powers in the process.

The move comes ahead of crucial elections to the body founded in 1949 and which regulates the functioning of at least 150,000 chartered accountants who sign off on the financial statements of companies—a sort of first line of defence against any financial misconduct by management or promoters.

Some of the government’s actions are seen by two people, an Icai council member and an official at the ministry of corporate affairs (MCA), as a reaction to Agarwal’s handling of the Satyam scandal, an allegation Agarwal denies.

Icai’s council is the institute’s core decision-making unit.

One of the charges against Agarwal is that he has been “soft” on S. Gopalakrishnan, a partner at Price Waterhouse, which audited Satyam’s books, and now in jail as his role in the Satyam scandal is investigated. “The allegation that I have gone slow on Gopalakrishnan or produced a weak report is absolute rubbish,” Agarwal said.   read more

CBI had sought the court’s permission to conduct brain mapping and lie detector tests on B Ramalinga Raju, the defamed founder of Satyam Computer Services, his brother B Rama Raju and their former CFO officer Srinivas Vadlamani. Prior to moving the high court, CBI had approached the lower court seeking its approval to conduct the scientific test. The lower court permitted the tests, but the petition was contested by the Rajus’ counsel.

CBI lawyers argue that the trio be subjected to the tests as they refused to divulge information necessary about the modus operandi of the case.

Meanwhile, the Enforcement Directorate (ED), which is looking in to the violation of the Foreign Exchange Management Act has decided to attach the properties of the Rajus’ in a month.

Currently, the statutory agency has provisionally attached some of the properties of Raju. It has to fulfill the required legal and administrative procedure before filing a case in a month and physically attach the properties, said LV Rao, assistant director of the ED Hyderabad.

Source: ET

This was the first time that the multi-disciplinary investigation team (MDIT) of CBI confronted SEC after it sought the Central government and CBI’s permission to investigate the fraud in India. The U.S. team, representing the Division of Enforcement of SEC, comprised leader Reid Muoio and his assistants Eric Hubbs and James Valentino. They met the senior management of Mahindra Satyam and auditors of KPMG who are involved in restatement of accounts of the company on Thursday.

The MDIT head, V.V. Lakshminarayana, told The Hindu that the U.S. delegation discussed with them how the scam occurred and how to fill the loss of investors in the Satyam scrip that was listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). They wanted to know the role of promoters of the company and the Price Waterhouse audit firm whose partners were arrested in the fraud.

The visitors were mainly looking into loss suffered by shareholders and had extensive discussions with officials of Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) which was SEC’s counterpart in India, he added.

Meanwhile, the court which is trying the Satyam fraud on Friday heard petitions by former Satyam chairman B. Ramalinga Raju’s sons, Teja Raju and Rama Raju (Junior), against freezing of their bank accounts by CBI. Mr. Rama Raju Jr. also wanted the CBI to return to him the personal computers, laptops and pen drives seized during raids on their premises after the scam assumed serious proportions in January.

CBI counsel Balla Ravindranath argued that the accounts of Rajus in HDFC Bank were suspected to contain funds diverted by Satyam.

If the court permitted defreezing of accounts, the brothers might withdraw the entire amount in a single day. If investigation by the agency proved that the funds indeed had been diverted, they might have to be confiscated by the government subsequently.

source : The hindu

source

“We will submit the report to the Ministry of Corporate Affairs on July 9 after we finalise the report at the final internal meeting by the committee on July 4 at Agra,” ICAI President U P Agarwal told PTI.

He was in the city for the convocation programme of the institute’s eastern region chapter held today.

Agarwal heads the high-powered committee, which has six other members, and it looks into financial reporting, accounting and auditing aspects with regard to the Satyam fiasco, reviews the shortcomings and recommends plugging loopholes against such frauds.
Declining to go into the report aspects, he said, “We want that chartered accountants should be empowered so that they can force the management to change the accounting of a company if they think it is not in best of the practice.”

Speaking about the profession at the current economic scenario, Agarwal said, “Recession has no impact on our profession.” In the campus placement this year, total 600 students were placed. The average salary had increased to Rs 6.91 lakh from Rs 5.7 lakh last year.

Source / courtesy: ET

By consolidating its offices and delivery infrastructure Satyam, which was recently acquired by Tech Mahindra, will be able to up capacity utilisation and also reduce overhead costs, says the report.

The review of operations is reportedly a part of Operation Phoenix, Tech Mahindra’s plan of resurrecting Satyam, which has seven development centres in China, Germany, Brazil, Egypt and Malaysia.

Incidentally, Satyam’s Australia chief Deepak Nangia recently quit in pursuit of greener pastures. The local head of IT company Satyam Computer services here Nangia was quoted saying by The Australian, “I left the company about three weeks ago to pursue other opportunities.”

He joined Satyam in 2002 and during his tenure Nangia built Satyam Australia into a 200-million-Aus-dollars company, securing blue-chip clients such as Telstra, NAB and Qantas.

Source / courtesy:  Indiatimes

“The case is required to be put on the fast track so that the guilty can be punished quickly,” Khurshid said after taking charge.

“SFIO has completed the investigation in the case and the ministry has asked it to chalk out a strategy for prosecution in coordination with the CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation),” he added.

SFIO has already submitted a 14,000-page report on the Satyam case to the ministry of corporate affairs.

IT giant Satyam Computer Services’ founder Ramalinga Raju quit as chairman Jan 7 this year after confessing he cooked the company’s account books and inflated profits over the past several years.

According to Khursheed, the next priority of the ministry would be to reintroduce the Companies Bill, 2008, which was introduced in the last Lok Sabha and has lapsed.

“The government’s focus will be on the protection of interest of average investors, particularly small investors, and ensure that nothing goes wrong, in addition to bringing in more transparency for boosting public confidence,” the minister said.

A number of issues related to the corporate governance framework, including the role of directors and the role of auditors, also need to be examined carefully, Khurshid added.

Source : ET

The Upaid case dates back to 1999 and relates to forgery and fraud that Upaid accused the earlier Satyam management of. However, Upaid declined to comment on the news.

Sources added that Satyam, with a new owner  ‘Tech Mahindra’  in place has started negotiations with other class action suits that relate to the Satyam scam masterminded by its former chairman B Ramalinga Raju.

In other developments, it is also learnt that Satyam will disclose 95% of information contained in its data room to shareholders, say sources. The confidential information was earlier only given to bidders who had qualified for the second stage of the Satyam bid. The information will be part of the open offer document that has been filed with market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) and is awaiting approval. Tech Mahindra, which picked up a 31% stake in Satyam following the bid will need to make the open offer for another 20% that it wants to pick up for a controlling stake in the company.

Source: moneycontrol

“The high-level committee set up to look into matters arising out of Satyam fraud is carrying out deliberations and is likely to submit its report in June at the next council meeting of the institute,”ICAI President U P Agarwal told media.

Agarwal, chairing the six-member committee, will look into financial reporting, accounting and auditing aspects with regard to the Satyam fiasco, review the shortcomings and recommend plugging loopholes against such frauds.

“We want that chartered accounts should be empowered so that they can force the management to change the accounting of a company if they think it is not in best of the practice,” Agarwal said.

Asked whether ICAI had submitted any proposal with the government on seeking additional power that would compel company managements to abide by directives from auditors to prepare the final accounts, Agarwal said during discussions with the government on Satyam, it had informally updated the government with the demand.

Source/courtesy: ET

The payment for the preferential shares was made out of Rs. 1,425 crore received from 37 front companies of Satyam, the CBI told a court here during arguments over the bail applications of Raju brothers and the former Chief Financial Officer, Srinivas Vadlamani. The court reserved orders on the bail pleas as also on an application by the CBI to subject the three accused to lie detector test and brain mapping on Saturday.

The CBI, in its charge sheet submitted to the court a few days ago, backed the claim of the government-appointed board of the company that the firm did not owe any money to the front companies floated by Mr. Ramalinga Raju. It recalled that he had claimed to have infused Rs. 1,425 crore into Satyam by pledging shares held by his family in several front companies. Mr. Ramalinga Raju’s contention was that Satyam owed Rs. 1,230 crore to his family members out of the money that he had brought.

The CBI, however, then lent no credence to Mr. Ramalinga Raju’s claim as it found no proof that the latter had infused money. The agency said it found no entries in this regard in Satyam’s books of accounts. It recovered only letters written by directors of 37 front companies on January 8 staking claim to the money lent to Satyam. These letters were written at the behest of Mr. Ramalinga Raju, it said.

Opposing the bail applications, CBI special public prosecutor Balla Ravindranath argued that investigation also revealed that there was evidence of benami share transactions by Mr. Ramalinga Raju in the names of trusted employees of Satyam, front companies and his relatives. Mr. Rama Raju conspired with Mr. Ramalinga Raju to ensure the transfer of Rs. 194.6 crore from the Satyam account to a company floated by the former and his family members without the consent of the board. Mr. Rama Raju was also responsible for converting the proceeds from such deals into assets acquired for 327 group companies.

Source / courtesy: The Hindu

The Satyam board has extended the deadline to submit technical and financial bids to April 13 from April 9 with the bidders seeking more information on the company, according to board member and HDFC chairman Deepak Parekh. The government-appointed board is expected to complete the process and announce the name of the successful bidder on the same day, according to reports.

Reports also state that the Satyam board would rank the bidders, whose technical bids are found to be satisfactory, based on their price tags. If there is no other bid which is at least 90% of the highest bidder, the highest bidder would be declared winner. The top bidder will be given two-four days time to deposit the money for 31% stake, and an open offer would follow thereafter.

Separately, reports say that L&T, Tech Mahindra, Wilbur Ross and Cognizant have reached the final stage in the race to buy Satyam. Private equity firm, Apax Partners, which had expressed interest in Satyam, has pulled out of the race, according to a business daily.

L&T, Tech Mahindra, Wilbur Ross and Cognizant have signed non-disclosure agreements, a pre-requisite for due diligence, on the assets and liabilities of Satyam, the financial newspaper says. B.K. Modi-promoted Spice Group, which is keen on acquiring the troubled IT firm, has not signed the non-disclosure pact citing lack of transparency in the bidding process, it adds.

Source: IndiaInfoline

Mr Srinivas admitted that the fraud at the software company, which rocked the Indian corporate world, was entirely perpetrated by former chairman B Ramalinga Raju, with the active involvement of the CFO (Mr Srinivas himself), the company’s managing director B Rama Raju and cost accountant G Ramakrishna.

Source: ET

Satyam’s suitors have been given information on the validated headcount during the due diligence of the assets of the beleaguered IT firm, people familiar with the development said. Engineering firm Larsen & Toubro, IT services firm Tech Mahindra and a private equity firm are among the seven to eight shortlisted bidders, who have started the due diligence.

These bidders were told that the employee attrition in Satyam was around 12% over the past six months. Of the 6,400-odd employees, who quit the firm, nearly half were on business-wait (people on the bench). Kiran Karnik, chairman of the government-appointed Satyam board, was recently on record to say that employee attrition in the firm was not alarming despite the prevailing situation.

Satyam plunged into a crisis after its disgraced founder B Ramalinga Raju admitted to perpetrating a Rs 7,000-crore financial fraud. Investigating agencies probing into the scam reckoned that Raju could have fudged employee numbers to siphon-off money from the firm.

The government-appointed board, which took charge of the firm after Raju’s confession in January this year, decided to re-validate the employee count. Senior company officials had claimed a headcount of 51,000 in January 2009. This means around 4,500 employees quit over the last two months, going by the latest headcount now of 46,600. Around one-fifth of the total number of employees are on-site staff.

But a few bidders, for acquiring a majority stake in Satyam such as iGate, have chosen to stay away from the bidding war on concerns of employee attrition, client attrition, falling revenues, dwindling margins and unknown legal liabilities in the US. Satyam is now internally looking at discounting its reported revenues by 10-15% in accounts that are in the process of being re-stated.

Source / courtesy : ET

“Throughout the system, the various bodies of the U.N. will wrap up the contracts. The details of that may need some fine-tuning, it may need to be worked out in the coming months,” a U.N. official said at a press conference, according to Dow Jones Newswires.

The news comes just days after it was reported that Satyam generated thousands of fake customer invoices as part of a scam to falsely inflate revenues and profits. India’s Economic Times, citing sources close to India’s Central Bureau of Investigation, said on Sunday the agency has retrieved more than 7,000 fake invoices and numerous other spurious documents over the past several weeks.

The upshot: The total size of Satyam’s deception is now approaching $2 billion, according to the paper. Investigators originally put the number significantly below that, based on statements from Satyam officials.

On Jan. 7, Satyam chairman Ramalinga Raju admitted falsifying the company’s cash position by as much as $1 billion while overstating quarterly earnings and revenue by up to 28%. Satyam also may have faked employee numbers and other data. Raju tendered his resignation and has since been arrested and jailed. He’s now in the custody of CBI, India’s equivalent of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Other Satyam officers, and two employees of PricewaterhouseCoopers India, also have been detained in connection with the case.

Increasingly nervous Satyam customers are looking for alternatives in case the scandal-scarred outsourcer is unable to restore internal stability or find a buyer with pockets deep enough to see the Indian company through its current crisis.

One of the latest Satyam customers to eye alternatives is Selective Insurance, the 47th largest property and casualty insurance company in the United States. Selective has outsourced about a quarter of its IT staffing requirements to Satyam, but it may be looking for other arrangements in light of Satyam’s woes.

“We believe we would be able to manage an efficient transition to a new vendor and not experience a significant negative impact to our operations in the event that we no longer retain Satyam in their current capacity due to the financial issues they are currently experiencing,” Selective said in papers filed Feb. 27 with the SEC.

Source: InformationWeek

“PwC (Price Waterhouse) has sent us four names of people who were involved in the Satyam audit. We have issued notices to these four people along with the former (Satyam) CFO (chief financial officer S. Vadlamani) and vice-president, internal audit committee (V.S. Prabhakara Gupta),” ICAI President Uttam Prakash Agarwal told reporters on the sidelines of an industry conference.

Mr. Agarwal didn’t elaborate on the content of the notices.

Price Waterhouse had earlier sent the names of two partners - S. Gopalakrishnan and Srinivas Taluri. It subsequently sent the names of two others - P. Shiva Prasad and C.H. Ravindranath.

Price Waterhouse, the Indian affiliate of PricewaterhouseCoopers, audited Satyam’s financial statements from the quarter ended June 30, 2000, through Sept. 30, 2008. The firm has already suspended Mr. Gopalakrishnan and Mr. Taluri.

Source: WallStreet

Companies have until 5 p.m. local time to register their interest in acquiring 51 percent of the company, and submit a detailed bid by March 20, Satyam said. Hyderabad, India-based Satyam’s founder Ramalinga Raju is under investigation after saying Jan. 7 he inflated $1 billion of the company’s assets.

India’s Larsen & Toubro Ltd. and Spice Corp. may be among bidders in the sale, aimed at restoring investor confidence and retaining clients after Satyam lost 88 billion rupees ($1.7 billion) in market value. The sale, which comes before Satyam restates its accounts, will let the buyer gain a workforce of 50,000 and global customers from Cisco Systems Inc. to Sony Corp.

“We have received a report from our legal advisers Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP and they said the liabilities could range between $440-$840 million. We have to factor this in,” the newspaper quoted Spice Group Chairman B.K. Modi as saying.

The diversified Spice Group, which has said it is interested in Satyam, plans to register with the outsourcer on Thursday to participate in a bidding for a majority stake, the paper said.

Modi could not be immediately reached for comment. Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher’s Singapore office did not reply to an email query.

Satyam, which now has a stock market value of about $640 million, has been struggling for survival since founder and chairman Ramalinga Raju shocked investors in January, saying the outsourcer’s profits had been overstated for years and assets falsified in India’s biggest corporate scandal.

It kicked off a bidding process on Monday to sell a 51 percent stake and said bidders need to register by Thursday.

Bidders will be asked to submit a detailed expression of interest and show availability of at least 15 billion rupees ($291 million) by March 20.

($1=51.6 rupees)

(Reporting by Ami Shah; Editing by Ranjit Gangadharan)

Courtesy / source: Reuters

International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) is keen on acquiring the scam-tainted Indian IT services firm Satyam Computer Services Ltd., according to a financial newspaper. IBM is understood to be the front-runner to acquire Satytam, the business daily adds.

IBM has begun talks with Satyam’s government-nominated board and has brought in a team of lawyers and investment bankers to assess the deal and its risks, the paper says.

The company doesn’t comment on rumors and speculation, Prashanth Balarama, a Bangalore-based spokesman for IBM, has been quoted as saying. Sridhar Maturi, a Hyderabad-based spokesman for Satyam, declined to comment.

Apart from IBM, other prominent players in the race to acquire Satyam are Larsen & Toubro (L&T), which owns 12% in the Hyderabad-based company, Tech Mahindra, B.K. Modi-owned Spice group and the Hinduja group.

Source

The bid-pack, said sources, comprises details of Satyam’s geographical revenue break-up, the revenue of the top five or 10 clients ( but not their names) and the contract life of major clients and likelihood of them staying with the company.

The minimum reserve price is understood to be based on Satyam’s current gross block (the total value of all the assets) and is linked to the past two weeks’ average share price. The books are not open for due diligence.

After the deal, the new buyer is likely to have a majority of its members on the new board. A 51 per cent stake is necessary for the buyer to institute a new board immediately.

However, bidders will not be allowed to revise their price after submitting the bid. The new buyer will have a three-year lock-in period.

The process assumes urgency since around seven big and medium-sized clients are understood to have moved out, with three others reviewing their contracts. If the process does not conclude by the end of March, more clients are expected to exit.

The government-appointed board has already admitted that two major clients have cancelled their contracts — one of them among the company’s top 10 clients — US-based State Farm Insurance.

Both IT and non-IT firms like Larsen & Toubro (which now has a 12 per cent stake in Satyam and has invested around Rs 670 crore in the company so far), B K Modi-owned Spice Group, Tech Mahindra and private equity firm KKR (which bought Flextronics three years ago for $900 million) are said to be the serious bidders still in the race.

Source: Business Standard

The findings of the Central Bureau of Investigation, or CBI, will likely also be used by litigants based in the US who have filed class action lawsuits against Hyderabad-based Satyam Computer, said CBI director Ashwani Kumar in an interview.

The special team that the CBI has set up comprises—besides its own officials—officers from the income-tax department, market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India, the serious fraud investigation office, auditors and accountants, forensic scientists and software developers, Kumar said.

The team has been divided into several sub-teams that will investigate various aspects of the complex accounting fraud, including transactions carried out through electronic means, said Kumar, who took charge of the organization in July.

These sub-groups will provide inputs to CBI, following up on leads related to each department and share information and relevant documents with one another, he said.
“Our probe will be all-encompassing,” Kumar said.

The fraud was driven probably by “greed and second reason, which we have to inquire into, is failure of the regulatory mechanism”, he said.
The investigation into alleged accounting irregularities at Satyam Computer was handed over to CBI last month by the Andhra Pradesh government.

Some opposition parties had accused the state government of trying to shield Satyam promoters including founder B. Ramalinga Raju, who on 7 January confessed to having cooked the company’s books over several years.
Former CBI director Joginder Singh said this kind of an investigation, wherein several agencies are enlisted by CBI, first took place following the 1992 stock market scam orchestrated by the late broker Harshad Mehta.

“The CBI can seek documents held by other organizations who have inquired into transactions made by the accused. They can also request for manpower from these departments,” Singh said.

Source/courtesy

The XIV Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Court, which is the designated court for CBI cases, will now hear the case pertaining to Rs 7,800-crore financial fraud in Satyam Computer, engineered by Satyam’s founder B Ramalinga Raju.

The Andhra Pradesh CID, which has till now investigated the case, arrested B Ramalinga Raju and his brother Rama Raju on January 9 and later also took into custody Satyam’s former CFO Vadlamani Srinivas, SRSR General Manager Gopalakrishnan Raju, and suspended partners of Price Waterhouse S Gopalakrishnan and Talluri Srinivas.

While Gopalakrishnan Raju of SRSR is out on a conditional bail, the remaining accused are in judicial remand till March 7 after their bail pleas were rejected by the court.

The CBI has formed a team of 23 investigation officers and has a three-member legal team of public prosecutors, who will henceforth handle the case.

Public Prosecutor K Ajay Kumar, who argued against Satyam at the VI Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate’s court, confirmed start of the process for transfer of the case.

Source : PTI via Business Standard

SEBI and the Company Law Board have shown great alacrity in the last few days, rewriting rules and granting exemptions from legal requirements to help Satyam find a new owner. Yet, with the restatement of the balance sheet still on, how will bidders and the new Board assess the worth of the company, asks RAGHUVIR SRINIVASAN.

The government appointed Board of Directors of Satyam Computer Services has made all the right moves in the last one month in its effort to first save the company from collapse, and then, get it back on its feet. Operating in an adverse atmosphere rife with rumours of customers walking away and imminent collapse of the company, the new Board has done remarkably well to bring Satyam to a stage where it can now hope to sell the company in one piece to a responsible buyer for a good price.

Yet the Board now faces its biggest, and most crucial, test in finalising a strategic buyer for the stricken company.

Even as the drama unfolds, the question that begs an answer is: Is it time to hand over the company to a strategic buyer?

The answer is: no. Satyam now is akin to a seriously ill patient who’s just been moved out of ICU into the nursing ward. How can one consider the patient’s marriage when she’s still in a delicate stage of convalescence?

Indeed, it is curious that at least four different buyers are in the race for Satyam even before its correct balance-sheet is drawn up. The restatement of its accounts is still on and it could be a few more weeks before the true financial picture is revealed.

Given this, how will the prospective buyers assess Satyam’s worth? What will the new Board base its asking price on? Surely not the current market price, because it is as misleading as the price based on SEBI’s open offer formula (average of the last six months’ market price).

Stabilising slowly

The market regulator, SEBI, and the Company Law Board have shown great alacrity in the last few days, rewriting rules and granting exemptions from legal requirements to help Satyam find a new owner. Why this seemingly unholy hurry among all concerned to marry Satyam off?

The company is gradually stabilising and this is the time for the Board to fully back the new CEO at the helm. Waiting for the operations to get back to normal and the balance sheet to be restated before inviting suitors does not appear to be a bad strategy at this point in time. Unless, of course, if it is feared that the restated balance sheet will reveal an ugly picture of Satyam’s real financial state.

Current indicators do not appear to point that way. Satyam’s business appears largely unhurt, even if a couple of its customers may have moved out.

It has actually bagged work-extensions and new orders worth $250 million in the period since the scandal became public.

The company has been able to meet its commitments to employees and vendors in the troubled period of the last month and has also been successful in securing bank funding of Rs 600 crore.

As the new Board has stated ad nauseam, the company has unencumbered assets in land and buildings and its employee count is what was stated at the time of its last financial results announcement in October, give or take a few due to natural attrition.

Yes, Satyam is certainly considerably lighter on cash assets as revealed in its last results but that does not make it a basket case that has to be sold off in a hurry.

Indeed, the considerable interest shown by the four suitors — L&T, B. K. Modi, Hinduja Group and Tech Mahindra — confirms that the value in Satyam, despite the plunder by Mr Ramalinga Raju, remains intact.

The prospective buyers seem to have either correctly assessed this or — as the L&T CEO Mr A. M. Naik said and got into trouble with SEBI for it — are privy to information not available in the public domain about Satyam’s correct financial position.

The urgency shown by at least two of them to bag the prize probably gives the game away. They seem to want to push through a deal at the lowest possible price, which is feasible only it is finalised now. And those concerned, the government, SEBI, CLB and indeed, even the new Board, seem to be wittingly or unwittingly helping the cause.

True value

In all this din, the public shareholder seems to have been forgotten. Consider the plight of shareholders who bought the Satyam stock even four months back when it was ruling at over Rs 300.

A deal with a strategic buyer, in the prevailing circumstances, may fetch them only a fraction of the price that they paid. Of course, equity investment is risky but will the price that they now get reflect the inherent, true value of Satyam?

There is thus, considerable responsibility riding on the shoulders of Satyam’s government-appointed Board.

On it devolves the onerous task of striking a balance between ensuring that Satyam gets a strong buyer who can take the company forward, and getting the best possible price from him for the existing minority shareholders.

Will Deepak Parekh and Co. succumb to the pressures from the prospective suitors and marry Satyam off in a hurry or will they wait and choose the best groom who can give her a good life? As in any arranged marriage, the elders — government and CLB — may well hold the answer.

blfeedback@thehindu.co.in

Source / courtesy: The Hindu Business Line

A team led by DIG V V Lakshmi Narayana met officials of the Andhra Pradesh CID and discussed the investigation conducted so far and the status of the the case. Andhra Pradesh CID was probing the scam that rocked the corporate India.

“We have taken up the case now and have started investigation into the case,” Narayana told reporters after holding discussions with the CID.

CBI has taken into its custody the seized documents, CDs, laptops and case dairies prepared by the Andhra Pradesh police, official sources said.

The CBI on Friday filed a case against Satyam’s disgraced founder Ramalinga Raju and others in what it called a unique fraud at the IT company, which has now been put up for sale.

Besides Raju, who is in judicial custody, Satyam’s erstwhile directors and auditor have been named in the CBI case filed under various sections of the Indian Penal Code relating to forgery and cheating.

Source: TOI

Company can raise authorized capital to Rs280 cr; CLB approval must for issuing shares to strategic investor.

This is one question that’s uppermost in the minds of analysts, marketmen and industry experts even as the Company Law Board (CLB) today gave the scam-tainted IT firm’s stake sale plan the go-ahead.

When contacted, Hinduja and L&T groups, two biggies interested in acquiring Satyam, declined to comment on the CLB move, saying they would take a call once the guidance on bidding procedures came out.

International operations’ president of Tech Mahindra, a strategic investor in Satyam, C P Gurnani said, “We are still evaluating options. But as of now, we are not interested as there is still no information on the finances of the company (Satyam). Nor is there enough understanding on its customers. Rather there has been some attrition in the number of clients as well as employees.”

Source: Business Standard