The
newly appointed board at troubled Indian IT supplier Satyam has
made
restoring confidence in the firm its top priority.
But the new directors have
alsoreiterated the uncertainty surrounding how much cash the
company has.
The Indian Ministry of Corporate Affairs has appointed three
directors to the firm. They are Deepak S Parekh the Chairman at
HDFC Bank, former NASSCOM president Kiran Karnik, and National
Stock Exchange director C Achuthan.
Parekh said the company needed to establish how much cash it has
available and how much it needs to continue to operate. "We have
capital issues that require immediate attention."
Last week interim CEO Ram Mynampati said in a conference that
the amount of cash on the balance sheet "is not
encouraging".
"We need some assistance as far as liquidity is concerned to pay
[suppliers]," added Mynampati.
But Parekh said if the money owed to it all came within the next
60 to 90 days it would have enough reserves topay its bills. But he
added that the company has to check that the figures on money owed
to it are accurate.
Parekh said, "The top priority of the board is to restore
confidence of the customers, the employees, the suppliers and the
investors by ensuring business continuity."
More than 14,000 Satyam workers had their CVs on the web within
a day of the news breaking that the company's chairman had been
cooking the books. Satyam's customers include large organisations
such as Ciba, Tesco and Fifa. Parekh described them as a "Who's who
of global corporations."
He said the government will appoint more members to the
emergency board, which will meet frequently.
Satyam chairman B Ramalinga Raju, who was arrested by Indian
police on Friday,
admitted last week that he had fiddled the company's books for
several years.