Satyam board members meet PM, Montek

The six board members of the fraud-hit Satyam Computer Services met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia on Thursday and apprised them about the steps taken to revive the IT company.

"The government has been very very helpful and positive. . .it was a good day, we were all in town (and) so we just came to say thank you because we have reached a stage", company's chairman Kiran Karnik told PTI after meeting Ahluwalia.

The meetings with Singh and Ahluwalia have taken place just two days before the announcement of the results of the general elections for the 15th Lok Sabha.

Besides Karnik, the other nominees on the Satyam board are HDFC chairman Deepak Parekh, former ICAI chairman T M Manoharan, CII chief mentor Tarun Das, LIC executive S B Mainak and former presiding officer of Securities and Appellate Tribunal C Achuthan.

Following Satyam founder B Ramalinga Raju's disclosure of the accounting fraud in January, the government disbanded the then board of the company and appointed six nominees, including chairman Karnik, to run the company.

Satyam is in the process of being taken over by Tech Mahindra, which emerged as the highest bidder in the auction to acquire the IT company.

As regards the government-appointed board, he said, "We have finished our task and now we should move out ...We were appointed by the government to do a certain job. The company has now done well ... it survived. It got a new owner. We should be out of it."

While paving the way for the takeover of Satyam by Tech Mahindra, the Company Law Board allowed the new owners to appoint four representatives on the board of the company.

On the strategy of the company to deal with class suits in the US and a similar one being tried here, Karnik said, "It is up to Tech Mahindra (to deal with them). They are not too worrisome. I think they can be handled."

Consumer organisation Midas Touch Investors Association has filed a type of class suit before the National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission seeking compensation of about Rs 5,000 crore (Rs 50 billion) for the 300,000 retail shareholders of Satyam.

The case, however, was not entertained by the Commission on the grounds that it did not have adequate infrastructure to deal with such suits. MTIA is reportedly planning to move higher court.