Is Raju playing the Green Goblin of Spiderman

Vengeance has become the buzzword this season with the release of Ghajini, so is Raju playing the same game aka the Green Goblin of Spiderman...............

I called up some of contacts both in PWC and Satyam's finance and internal audit functions, to get their views.

Predictably the response from PWC was more muted on account of a gag order. 

A chat with a core member of the accounting function at Satyam reflected a sense of disbelief,  he wasn't willing to believe any of the contents of the Raju letter was true. Same was when I spoke with the member of the internal audit team, the reaction was the same. At both quarters they were unwilling to digest that cash and cash equivalents could have been inflated by such magnanimous proportions.

Interestingly, both of the the Satyam's contacts i spoke to had an inner feeling that this revelation comes at a time when Raju himself had no stock in the Company as his shares were pledged and, this disclosure by Raju manifests in an opportunity to get himself or through his benami shareholders a back door entry in Satyam by acquiring the stock at cheap prices.

Another point of note is that most of the FII's were able to offload a majority of their stake in Satyam on both the trading sessions on Wednesday and Friday... well then someone should have been buying this stock... but why would any sane person buy this stock, knowing fully well that Rs. 80 on Satyam's stock price was only attributable to the book value of the inflated cash position in Satyam alone....

On a closer introspection of the "priceless" letter released by Raju, the first para of the letter reminisces a more USGAAP language, where he takes of the inflated cash and cash equivalents, receivables etc, the remaining portion of the letter seems to have been carefully drafted by a lawyer. If rumour mongers are to be believed then the letter seems to have been drafted by a US based law firm close to Raju.

The Green Goblin of Spiderman wanted his vengeance after he was ousted from his own Company by the board, is Raju also doing the same...... only time will tell