After over a week of bad news, there appears to be some light at the end of the Satyam tunnel - the IT major has received assurances of financial lifelines from lending institutions, while its new board raised hopes that the firm's finances were not as dire as feared with its quantum of receivables being a healthy Rs 1,700 crore.
The government-appointed board also said it was open to take on "strategic investors". The good tidings on its finances might make potential "white angels" see an engagement with Satyam as viable in commercial terms rather than an act of charity that no business entity would undertake.
The news came on a day the government appointed three more directors on the board -- CII chief mentor Tarun Das, Institute of Chartered Accountants of India's former president T N Manoharan and LIC nominee Suryakant Balkrishna Mainak. The appointments are further expected to strengthen the new board's efforts at arranging funds.
"The first impression from the government-nominated directors is that Satyam's operations are sound and, by and large, major customers are willing to remain with the company," corporate affairs minister Prem Chand Gupta said after announcing the appointments on Thursday.
HDFC chairperson Deepak Parekh's announcement that rather than being completely in the red, Satyam's receivables stood at Rs 1,700 crore was greeted with cautious optimism by PMO. Though it needed to be seen how soon these funds would come into Satyam's coffers and what outstandings to banks were, it was felt that the IT giant may not need as much assistance at all. "The figure seems to tally with working capital needs," said sources.
The government's optimism stemmed from a meeting earlier in the day between Gupta and Parekh, the senior-most member in the board. Parekh also met Planning Commission deputy chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia to brief him about Satyam's revival roadmap.
After his meeting with Gupta, Parekh said the company had "healthy receivables" and pegged them at Rs 1,700 crore. This exceeds the Rs 1,100 crore quoted by B Ramalinga Raju, Satyam's fallen promoter who had plunged the company into a deep crisis when he owned up to having defrauded the company by cooking up books and siphoning money, perhaps for years.
Indeed, it now turns out that if anything, Raju was at least being truthful about the receivables.
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