What exactly happened with satyam computers?

Answer 1

Ramalinga Raju's confession with low revenue numbers can be interpreted as either -

The growth of satyam has drastically reduced over the time, which means less clients/projects (or)

Satyam did manage good business but the money was used inappropriately.

If Satyam's growth has reduced drastically (read as less clients), the effect would have been evident across the company. The resultant indication would be less project and more people on bench. If this is the case, then every Industry vertical manager/employees could have felt the effect in his domain. But, there were no news in the past on Satyam employees on bench in big numbers (or) atleast the employees did not feel the effect. Here, one should remember that Satyam's Chief strategy officer and Satyam BPO's CEO 'resigned' on October 2008. The reason behind their resignation was believed due to 'organizational restructuring!'

Also read: World Bank Issue, Satyam, Wipro - How all these started suddenly?

Now on the other side: if satyam had good business( which is highly likely), the possible scenario is improper use of profits generated by satyam computers. The founder's family owned Maytas properties which was founded only in 2005, was in news for multiple projects like Residential building, ports, SEZ, harbor etc. Here raises the doubt: Did Raju invest heavily through Maytas lured by the booming real estate market in the past years?Any bad investment in the real estate sector would have sucked the money of satyam in this slowing economic growth. Apart from real estate, Raju is said to be an aggressive investor who had dropped his money in failed dotcom companies.

This is evident from one of the quarterly results announcements from satyam:

"........the Rs 152-crore provisioning covers losses posted by subsidiaries and sunk costs in dotcom ventures and start-ups. Subsidiary VisionCompass accounts for Rs 126 crore of this provisioning, investments in dotcoms and start-ups make up the rest......."

Did he use satyam's money in multiple ventures? Uday kotak of Kotak Mahindra mentioned that, Satyam didnot give a satisfactory answer on the two thousand crores of money that was present in the current account instead of 'Savings account' which would have earned good interest for satyam.

So, did Raju used the 'candid confession' in the resignation letter as a tool to divert from the actual scenario? May be there is something more than what he wrote . It is now in the hands on how effectively the interrogation proceeds.