Blatant Shameless Stealing

I am not sure how much media attention this is getting but it is huge! Satyam the software services company started by one Ramalinga Raju tried to steal public money blatantly. Satyam had $1 billion in cash in the bank and Ramalinga Raju wanted to steal it.

He tried to divert the money to his family business, a company called Maytas. Get this, according to forbes they tried to pay $1.3 billion for 51% of Maytas Properties and $300 million for Maytas Infra. It does not get any more worse than that. They are probably wanted to pay a premium of 400% for the Maytas properties. Luckily enough financial analysts noticed it and raised a storm. They immediately downgraded the stock and said the management is not credible. The stock went down 50% on NYSE and 30% on the Bombay Stock Exchange. Apparently it wiped out $2 billion of the company value.

The investors in India will now see the true value of globalization because if not for Citi, JP Morgan and others Satyam (Raju) would have stolen all the money and nothing would have happened. He obviously bribed the entire board and would have bribed the analysts too if not for the fact that they are in the US. All I can say is he is an asshole and a blot on India's name. I cannot believe he even tried it. He probably thought he is doing business in his village or probably that he is running a grocery store in the corner of the street. He quickly realized that it not "seema" and that there are rules. There should be an investigation into this and the culprits should be arrested, by which I mean Raju and entire board. He has caused a lot of losses for the investors and so there should be a class action lawsuit against the company.

Either way he has caused irrepairable damage to the company and future revenues could be affected. This is the worst thing he could do to even himself in a recession. I hope he does not have a future in the company and in the business world. My symapthies to the employees and share holders. I don't own any Satyam stock.