Sunday, January 11, 2009

Satyam - The End of A Beginning or The Beginning of An End?

The events of this week with Satyam Computer Services, India's fourth largest IT services company, has left all shocked and stumped.
Industry associations and government are keen to ensure that this does not in any way dampen the "India story". In a basket of mangoes, there can be a few bad mangoes which does not make the basket bad. Enron did not mean that all American business enterprises indulge in fraud and similarly this is an aberration which needs to be highlighted and quickly addressed.
The customers, employees and shareholders are the most impacted with this. For others, it is more on an "environment news" - but for anyone who is one of these, the damage is closer and devastating for employees and shareholders.
It is good to see that the government has taken up some rare and unprecedented action ( at least to my knowledge) of instilling this confidence by constituting a new board. Once the true state of the finance position is known, the team will chalk out a program to stabilize, recover and then grow.
This is important for Satyam and for the offshoring and IT outsourcing industry from India in general. Something to closely watch and these events just reinforce that nothing can be taken for granted.

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