Satyam Scandal

On 7 January 2009, company Chairman Ramalinga Raju resigned after notifying board members and the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) that Satyam's accounts had been falsified.

Raju confessed that Satyam's balance sheet of 30 September 2008 contained:

* inflated figures for cash and bank balances of INR 5,040 crore (as against INR 5,361 crore reflected in the books).
* an accrued interest of INR 376 crore which was non-existent.
* an understated liability of INR 1,230 crore on account of funds was arranged by himself.
* an overstated debtors' position of INR 490 crore (as against INR 2,651 crore in the books).

Raju claimed in the same letter that neither he nor the managing director had benefited financially from the inflated revenues. He claimed that none of the board members had any knowledge of the situation in which the company was placed.

Raju stated that

"What started as a marginal gap between actual operating profit and the one reflected in the books of accounts continued to grow over the years. It has attained unmanageable proportions as the size of company operations grew significantly (annualised revenue run rate of Rs 11,276 crore in the September quarter of 2008 and official reserves of Rs 8,392 crore). As the promoters held a small percentage of equity, the concern was that poor performance would result in a takeover, thereby exposing the gap. The aborted Maytas acquisition deal was the last attempt to fill the fictitious assets with real ones. It was like riding a tiger, not knowing how to get off without being eaten.”

Consequences:

Raju had appointed a task force to address the Maytas situation in the last few days before revealing the news of the accounting fraud. After the scandal broke, the then-board members elected Ram Mynampati to be Satyam's interim CEO. Mynampati's statement on Satyam's website said:

"We are obviously shocked by the contents of the letter. The senior leaders of Satyam stand united in their commitment to customers, associates, suppliers and all shareholders. We have gathered together at Hyderabad to strategize the way forward in light of this startling revelation."

• On 10 January 2009, the Company Law Board decided to bar the current board of Satyam from functioning and appoint 10 nominal directors. "The current board has failed to do what they are supposed to do. The credibility of the IT industry should not be allowed to suffer." said Corporate Affairs Minister Prem Chand Gupta. Chartered accountants regulator ICAI issued show-cause notice to Satyam's auditor PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) on the accounts fudging. "We have asked PwC to reply within 21 days," ICAI President Ved Jain said.

• On the same day, the Crime Investigation Department (CID) team picked up Vadlamani Srinivas, Satyam's then-CFO, for questioning. He was arrested later and kept in judicial custody.

• On 11 January 2009, the government nominated noted banker Deepak Parekh, former NASSCOM chief Kiran Karnik and former SEBI member C Achuthan to Satyam's board.
  

Analysts in India have termed the Satyam scandal as India's own Enron scandal.

• Immediately following the news, Merrill Lynch (Now with Bank of America) terminated its engagement with the company. Also, Credit Suisse suspended its coverage of Satyam.[citation needed]. It was also reported that Satyam's auditing firm PricewaterhouseCoopers will be scrutinized for complicity in this scandal. SEBI, the stock market regulator, also said that, if found guilty, its license to work in India may be revoked. Satyam was the 2008 winner of the coveted Golden Peacock Award for Corporate Governance under Risk Management and Compliance Issues, which was stripped from them in the aftermath of the scandal. The New York Stock Exchange has halted trading in Satyam stock as of 7 January 2009. India's National Stock Exchange has announced that it will remove Satyam from its S&P CNX Nifty 50-share index on January 12.The founder of Satyam was arrested two days after he admitted to falsifying the firm's accounts. Ramalinga Raju is charged with several offences, including criminal conspiracy, breach of trust, and forgery.

• Satyam's shares fell to 11.50 rupees on 10 January 2009, their lowest level since March 1998, compared to a high of 544 rupees in 2008. In New York Stock Exchange Satyam shares peaked in 2008 at US$ 29.10; by March 2009 they were trading around US $1.80.

• The Indian Government has stated that it may provide temporary direct or indirect liquidity support to the company. However, whether employment will continue at pre-crisis levels, particularly for new recruits, is questionable.

• On 14 January 2009, Price Waterhouse, the Indian division of PricewaterhouseCoopers, announced that its reliance on potentially false information provided by the management of Satyam may have rendered its audit reports "inaccurate and unreliable".

• On 22 January 2009, CID told in court that the actual number of employees is only 40,000 and not 53,000 as reported earlier and that Mr. Raju had been allegedly withdrawing INR 20 crore rupees every month for paying these 13,000 non-existent employees.

What went wrong?

The controversy has got many in corporate circles here wondering whether it was India's new found love affair with capitalism that led to Satyam's downfall.

In the letter to his shareholders, Mr Raju says that he was trying to cover up the losses at Satyam, and in doing so got caught up in a vicious cycle of lies and debts.

He says this attempt to hide the losses from investors and shareholders was like "riding a tiger, not knowing how to get off without being eaten".

According to Mr Raju's statement, about $1bn (£0.65bn), or 94% of the cash on the company's books, was made up - and analysts say it was the manipulation of the cash flow which could have been one reason why the deceit was undetected.

Many analysts also say that the chase for huge profits, and the desire to keep up with the break-neck speed of India's $50bn outsourcing industry's growth rates that may have been behind Mr Raju's motivation in fudging the accounts at his firm.
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