New Satyam board to elect chairman today

The new board of the Satyam Computers will meet to elect its chairman and work out a strategy to revive the company.

The new board was announced on Sunday. Last week the government disbanded the board of Satyam days after its founder B Ramalinga Raju admitted to a 7,000-crore fraud in the books.

HDFC Chairman Deepak Parekh, former NASSCOM president Kiran Karnik and former SEBI member C Achuthan are the new board members. They will meet on Monday to elect a chairman.

The three experts would have a legitimate claim to seek every piece of paper or bit of information that could be related to the Rs 7,800 crore financial fraud.

The trio could prove conducive to investigation being carried out by teams from market regulator SEBI and Serious Fraud Investigation Office of Corporate Affairs Ministry.

"The board is expected to meet within 24 hours and decide (the) further course of action," Corporate Affairs Minister Prem Chand Gupta told reporters on Sunday at a press conference and added more members would be appointed to the Satyam board.

The government on Friday sacked the board of Satyam.

According to Company Law Board, the new board of the IT major can have a maximum of 10 members.

On a question if the state government would involve CBI in the probe on account of the enormity of the fraud, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy told reporters in Hyderabad that nothing prevents CBI from inquiring into this and nothing on earth prevents any other law enforcement agency from inquiring into them.[ndtv]