Satyam buyer may emerge by Feb end: Parekh

17 Feb 2009, REUTERS



NEW DELHI: Buyers for fraud-hit Satyam Computer Services are likely to emerge by the end of February, a senior board member said on Tuesday.

Asked whether he saw any buyer coming forward for Satyam, Deepak Parekh said: "Yes. By the end of this month."

Last week Satyam said it would accelerate plans to find a suitor after India's market regulator amended takeover rules.

Satyam is looking to trim the number of its senior managers, a company spokeswoman said as the cash-starved outsourcer plans to find a suitor.

"Two managers have gone. We do not have a number but it is likely more will go," Archana Muthappa, head of media relations in India said over telephone. "It is part of a rationalisation of the organisation structure."

She declined to put a time frame for the process but said the government appointed board was discussing it.

The two officials who have quit are Subu D Subramanian, global head of manufacturing and automotives division and Anil Kumar, a senior vice-president at Satyam's financial services division, she said.

Satyam, India's fourth-largest outsourcer, is battling for survival since Jan. 7 when its founder Ramalinga Raju quit as chairman revealing profits have been falsified for years and $1 billion of cash and bank balances did not exist in the country's biggest corporate scandal.

The government dissolved Satyam's board and appointed six directors to save Satyam and its 50,000 employees. The new board has appointed Goldman Sachs and Avendus, an Indian investment bank, to help find potential investors.