Courage under Satyam fire?

So, Ramalinga Raju has high blood pressure, acute ulcers and even diabetes. Just a fortnight back, I was not aware of such intricate details about the (now ex) chairman’s health of India’s fourth largest IT company.

Isn’t it funny that no one seems to get such serious diseases while swindling over Rs 5,000 crore? Didn’t his blood pressure go up sharply every time he was fudging those numbers… how many zeros did he have to add every quarter and, if I have to believe his confession, for seven years, to ride a ‘non-existent’ tiger?

Over the years, we as journalists or citizens, have watched helplessly as politicians and white-collared criminals have `fallen ill’ or used other ways to evade the law.

Let’s take Raju’s case. On Thursday, market regulator Sebi summoned him at 5 pm. His lawyer appeared and said that he will appear on Friday at 4 pm because he was ill. On Thursday night, the man and his brother went and surrendered themselves to the Andhra police and were promptly arrested. Now Sebi cannot get access to him till January 16.

But there are other important questions.

Why haven’t his bank accounts been frozen? No one has any idea. Newspaper reports suggest that he has confessed to the authorities that he fudged the numbers. Then why can’t his accounts be frozen as a precautionary measure, so that Satyam’s shareholders and employees will not be left in the lurch? (Was he even paying the company’s contribution to the Employee Provident Fund for the 53,000 employees?)

Or will shareholders be simply have to be told that only invest in companies after doing proper research, look at the management’s past and stupid numbers like cash flows?

But even professional fund managers were fooled. Aren’t they supposed to have a whole lot of research data from so-called analysts, who are paid exorbitant salaries?

In fact during the month of December and I suspect, when the Maytas merger deal did not fructify, many fund managers bought Satyam shares because their ‘analysis’ said it was cheap and did not reflect the company’s fundamentals. Many brokerage houses also put a ‘buy’ call on the company.

So as investors, who do we trust? Fund managers cannot make the right call and brokerage houses are as clueless.

Does anyone suspect, why the small investor, is always scared about the stock market. Whether it is Harshad Mehta or Ketan Parekh or C R Bhansali or Raju… small investors suffer.

In some ways, it is good that the retail investors’ participation in the stock market is quite low. Our institutions are incapable of protecting them…There is ‘no courage under fire’.