Mendu Rammohan Rao, Dean, Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, who chaired yesterday’s board meeting of Satyam Computer Services Ltd that cleared the controversial proposal to acquire the B Ramalinga Raju-family controlled Maytas Infra and Maytas Properties for $1.6 billion has admitted that the board was “concerned” over aspects of the deal but decided to take the “risk.”
“The board had concerns, but finally it decided it’s fine…We thought we will take the risk, go to the market and see how it reacts,” Rao told The Indian Express hours after Satyam reversed the decision following investor outrage and a battering in the markets. The concerns, Rao said, related to the move to diversify into “unrelated areas” such as real estate and infrastructure and on valuation which was done by one of the “Big Four” accounting firms.
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In fact, the decision of the Satyam board, which includes ‘Father of Pentium’ Vinod Dham, former Cabinet Secretary TR Prasad and Harvard Business School professor and governance expert Krishna Palepu, was “unanimous,” Rao said.
P. Vaidyanathan Iyer is The Indian Express’s Managing Editor, and leads the newspaper’s reporting across the country. He writes on India’s political economy, and works closely with reporters exploring investigation in subjects where business and politics intersect.
He was earlier the Resident Editor in Mumbai driving Maharashtra’s political and government coverage. He joined the newspaper in April 2008 as its National Business Editor in Delhi, reporting and leading the economy and policy coverage.
He has won several accolades including the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award twice, the KC Kulish Award of Merit, and the Prem Bhatia Award for Political Reporting and Analysis. A member of the Pulitzer-winning International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), Vaidyanathan worked on several projects investigating offshore tax havens.
He co-authored Panama Papers: The Untold India Story of the Trailblazing Offshore Investigation, published by Penguin.
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