UPDATE 3-New Satyam board says will take time to get on track

Mon Jan 12, 2009 10:05am EST
 
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* Accounts restatement, hiring of CEO and CFO are priority

* New board hopes to appoint new accounting firm in 48 hours

* Shares close up 44 percent in Mumbai

* Wipro shares hit as World Bank bars it from contracts

* Graduates worry about job offers

(Adds details, quotes)

By Devidutta Tripathy

HYDERABAD, India, Jan 12 (Reuters) - Satyam Computer Services needs to restate its accounts and appoint senior people as soon as possible to get back on track, but this will take time, the new board of the fraud-hit Indian company said.

Shares in Satyam (SATY.BO) jumped as much as two-thirds on Monday on expectations the new board, the first three members of which were appointed by the government on Sunday, would rescue the company in the wake of India's biggest corporate scandal.

"It depends on how soon we get a CEO, it depends on how soon we get a good financial manager and it depends on how soon we get the accounts restated," Deepak Parekh, a senior Indian banker, told reporters after the first meeting of the new board.

"Account restatement is ... one of the biggest issues we have because no one has faith in the numbers that are being produced so far," he said.

Satyam founder Ramalinga Raju resigned as chairman last week, saying profits had been falsified for years and about $1 billion or 94 percent of the company's cash and bank balances at the end of September did not exist.

"If you have to go through four, five years of accounts ... it is going to take time by the auditors," Parekh said, adding he hoped to appoint a new accounting firm within 48 hours.

The new board met at Satyam headquarters in the southern city of Hyderabad to lay out a roadmap for the survival of the company after the fraud hit Satyam's business prospects and triggered worries some clients may cancel contracts

"The option of a merger is always open," Parekh said in response to a question.

Parekh said the company may have to ask for an extension of the month-end deadline to report its December quarter results and said if the receiveables as reported were correct, then the company should have adequate liquidity.  Continued...

 

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