Saytam: why government needs to act now

In my last blog post, I briefly stated what the government needed to do:

appoint an interim board/administrator/receiver to take charge of the assets of Satyam – whatever little is left of them;
initiate a thorough fact finding investigation of what went wrong, and how.

What I did not do was to highlight the urgency of the first step:

Today, Satyam has a vacuum at the top. The promoters are gone; and the independent directors who would normally take charge in a situation like this have no credibility left.
Satyam is a large company with global visibility and global clients. These clients would expect that they would continue to be serviced.
Even if Satyam is to be sold, somebody has to run the sale.
In the next few days, if nothing is done, both clients and employees would leave in droves and there would be nothing to sell.

I think this needs action today or at the very least within 24 hours.

Posted at 2:37 pm IST on Wed, 7 Jan 2009 permanent link