Mahindra Satyam
| Mahindra Satyam (Satyam Computer Services Limited)
|
|
|---|---|
 |
|
| legal form | Corporation |
| founding | 1987 |
| resolution | 2013 |
| Seat |
 India , Hyderabad
|
| Number of employees | 29,000 |
| Branch | IT services |
| Website | www.mahindrasatyam.com |
Mahindra Satyam (formerly Satyam Computer Services Ltd. ) was an Indian software and consulting company headquartered in Hyderabad . The company was listed in the BSE Sensex financial index.
Satyam was founded in 1987 by Ramalinga Raju and claims to have around 29,000 employees worldwide. As part of the accounting scandal in 2009, it came out that at least 6,000 employees were simply invented, at that time the number of employees worldwide was still just under 53,000. Since June 2009, following a takeover by Tech Mahindra, the IT subsidiary of the Mahindra Group , the company has been trading as Mahindra Satyam. In Tech Mahindra , the company was finally completely absorbed at the end of June 2013.
The word "Satyam" is the South Indian variant of the Sanskrit / Hindi word satya and means "truth" in German .
The computer company also offered its services such as software programming, IT consulting and outsourcing at low prices to numerous international groups such as Sony, Nestlé and General Electric.
2009 accounting scandal
At the beginning of January 2009 it became known that the company was involved in a balance sheet manipulation scandal. Ramalinga Raju announced that the company's profits had been inflated for several years. While the company's financial situation is still unclear, a board member of direct competitor infosys has denied his company's interest in taking over.
The CEO Ramalinga Raju and his brother, the former board member Rama Raju, as well as the former CFO Vadlamani Srinivas are in prison in Hyderabad. The previous Satyam board of directors was dissolved.
Raju had admitted massive balance sheet falsifications in a letter to the supervisory board. For example, at the end of September 2008, he reported a profit margin of 24 percent for the previous quarter - in reality it was only three percent. The company's assets alone were stated too high by the equivalent of 760 million euros. In total, the shortfall amounts to more than one billion euros. The forgeries started with a small gap and spread over the years, wrote Raju. "I rode a tiger and didn't know how to get off without being eaten."
An Economic and Political Weekly editorial doubts the alleged business losses and rather suspects that funds were diverted for personal purposes of the promoters and / or to government clients or companies allied with the governing parties. Questions are inevitably raised over the years, due to a lack of supervision by the highly paid, independent members of the Supervisory Board and the responsible auditors.
After news of the scandal balance sheet, the share price was Satyam on the stock exchange in Mumbai collapsed within a few hours by almost 78 percent. The value of the company melted within a few months from $ 7 billion to just under $ 500 million. The financial sector is already talking about an Indian Enron case and is drawing parallels to the momentous collapse of the US energy trader.
Individual evidence
- ↑ "I keep my fingers crossed for Bayern Munich" on cio.de , accessed on July 21, 2010
- ↑ a b c Raju's risky ride on the tiger on spiegel.de , accessed on July 21, 2010
- ↑ Ftd: Satyam scandal shakes India ( memento from July 30, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
- ↑ Reading the Satyam Scam ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. January 17, 2009
- ↑ Randeep Ramesh, Kakoli Bhattacharya: India has its 'Enron moment' after revelations of Satyam founder's £ 1bn fraud. Manchester Guardian January 8th 2009
