Mahindra group MD and Vice-Chairman Anand Mahindra, who is also non-executive chairman of Satyam-owner Tech Mahindra, today said he was interested in the Hyderabad-based company even before wrong-doing in the IT firm came to light.
"Let me make a confession, we actually thought about it a year earlier. There were some reports about him (Raju) being pursued by IBM. And that point I had a word with him. I was always puzzled as to why he never come back to me because it looked so interesting for him," Mahindra said in an interview.
He said that even though Satyam was twice their size but he still saw a real fit because of the complementarity of the verticals.
"I reached out again when the Maytas issue surfaced and again got no answer. I reached out through various intermediaries and then of course the infamous confession took place and then it was a process of the government in a very exemplary manner," he said.
Tech Mahindra acquired a 31 per cent stake in Satyam for Rs 1,756 crore in a global bidding in the first round of preferential allotment, beating L&T, which is a shareholder in the company.
Recently, Tech Mahindra was allotted shares to take its shareholding up to 42.7 per cent in a second round of preferential allotment, after its open offer did not receive adequate response.
While Tech Mahindra had about 24,000 employees, Satyam had about 48,000 people at the time of the acquisition.