Is Satyam staring at Ctl+Alt+Del?

Thu, Jan 8 12:51 PM

As the Satyam drama unfolds, more clarity on its financial standing will emerge once the auditors recast the books after accounting for the fudging. At the first glance, it looks like Satyam as a corporate entity will not go under and capsize. It does have a sound operational base and has created a place for itself in the market. However, the dastardly acts of the top management have put a cloud over the enterprise that was created with a lot of effort. The fraud has not only brought the board members of the company under scanner but also the bankers, auditors and the analysts who kept on reviewing the company four times a year. The future prospects look truly grim.

"Satyam will now be enquired under civil and criminal laws not just in India but in the US as well. Though both the countries have similar laws, we have seen that the enforcement in the US is quite stringent. The new board and leadership will matter a lot to its relationship with the clients," said industry veteran, Deepak Ghaisas, former CEO, India Operations and CFO of I-flex Solutions. Industry experts also feel the chairman's admission of guilt comes in the wake of something worst coming for the company.

The possibility of a takeover from private equity investors is also in jeopardy. Industry players feel that Satyam will not get buyers as the acquirer will have to face the legal liabilities. Moreover, the company may find it difficult to get suitors as even its client list and deal flow is under scrutiny. The fact that Satyam could be forging the number of clients is not completely ruled out by experts.

"Clients are the biggest assets for an IT company. For any suitor that Satyam may have, its deal flows will be the biggest consideration. However, as admitted, Satyam showed bloated revenues in its second quarter results," said an analyst with a Mumbai-based brokerage. He added that there could only be two ways of doing it. Either the company was showing more revenues from its existing clients or it could be having dummy clients.

"Considering that IT companies are in no compulsion to reveal the names of their customers or give a break-up of individual clients, this could be possible. However, cooking up the names big companies as their clients could be a little remote," said an IT analyst on the condition of anonymity. "It will be difficult for any company to evaluate Satyam as there is no clarity on any subject, be it its client list or the number of clients it has," said Ashutosh Gupta, vice-president, investment research, Evalueserve.

Harish H V, partner, Grant Thornton, said, "People want to wait and watch what else is there before they take it up." Apart from this, their woes could be added by client migration. Religare Hichens Harrison said, "In short term we will see lot of Satyam's clients migrating to competition like Infosys, TCS and Wipro. Also, this development would make Satyam unattractive for any competitor or a PE player to take over the company." Kaustubh Dhavse, deputy director, ICT Practice, Frost and Sullivan, South Asia and Middle East, said, "Satyam will be in an uncertainty phase during the coming months. All its existing contracts might be in jeopardy. Satyam needs to put confidence among its clients, as there will be thoughts among their clients of moving away. "

For employees it remains a wait and watch situation as well. "We have been asked not to panic but it remains a concern for us in terms of the brand value we are connected to," says a Satyam employee. Another employee adds that around 400 employees at the Delhi office have been asked to look for a job on Wednesday.

At the same time industry experts feel there could be more to the situation. According to a source, "There is an air of uncertainly and if things should be believed Satyam may be on the sale block." The source said the sequence of events look like the minds are played to beat down Satyam shares to a level that it becomes an attractive catch. The source added that Satyam, the fourth largest IT company in the country, may interest service providers, or even for a financial firm who may look at fixing the finances and keeping profit as it may look at diluting stake after the buy or selling the business in bits and pieces to service providers.

HR managers in the industry say this comes as an added woo to the IT industry which is already reeling under the pressure of attrition, retention, rupee fluctuations, economic slowdown etc. HR managers believe that Satyam has deeply hampered the morale of the employees and going ahead company will not be able to attract talent for quite some time. "More people from the top management will leave following the resignation of few directors in the past," said Atul Srivastava, Sr. VP and head, Corporate HRD, Datamatics. According to Shiv Agrawal, CEO of ABC consultants said, "Most of the senior employees have money in the form of ESops which is now as good as nothing. Hence there is a real loss for them as far as money is concerned." Had the market been good today we would have heard people quitting Satyam in thousands, say experts.