Kiran Karnik: Chairman of the Board
Minutes after Minister for Corporate Affairs PC Gupta announced a new three-member board on January 11, Kiran Karnik said he was pleased with the speed and urgency with which the government acted. He had, he added, no knowledge of what had taken place at Satyam other than what was in the public domain. He also insisted the malaise was an isolated aberration to an otherwise brilliant track record of the IT industry. He said his first priority would be to understand the situation.
Hardly 100 days later, the new board (chaired by him) has solved the first problem of Satyam — identifying a new owner (of course, the Company Law Board has to clear the deal and formally declare Tech Mahindra the new owner).
Karnik knows the IT industry well. He was president of Nasscom (National Association of Software and Service Companies) for seven years. He took charge after the sudden demise of Dewang Mehta in 2001. A permanent invitee on the executive panel, he had announced his intention to resign from Nasscom in April 2007 when he turned 60, but stayed on till Som Mittal took over in 2008.
Incidentally, he knew Ramalinga Raju well. He was the president when Ramalinga Raju became the chairman of the software body in 2006. Ironically, he had then said: “We are delighted to have Raju taking on the chairmanship... He has played an important role, both as a member and as vice-chairman of Nasscom’s Executive Council. Raju, apart from leading one of India’s largest IT companies, is also greatly respected in the industry. With his entrepreneurial drive, guidance and leadership, we are certain that he will bring even greater levels of sagacity and maturity to Nasscom....”
By now, of course, he would have revised his opinion of Raju.
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Deepak Parekh
Deepak Parekh, HDFC chairman, is no stranger to fixing complex problems. From the Unit Trust of India crisis, that first broke out in the 1990s, to solving the telecom unified licensing mess in 2003, or preparing the roadmap for pension fund investment, insurance and banking sector reforms and setting things right at Satyam, Parekh has always been at hand for the government.
Soon after his appointment to the Satyam board, he was clear about the strategy, making it clear that reassessing the accounts would be of paramount importance. By the time the first meeting was over, he identified the cash position as the immediate challenge, since it would have affected salary payment and the government-nominated directors wanted to ensure employees and clients were in place even as they went about finding a buyer.
It was only natural for someone whose father and grandfather had worked at Central Bank of India to aspire to be a banker. When his uncle, HT Parekh, asked him to return to India, Parekh took a pay cut and joined HDFC as a deputy general manager in 1978.
But the tough taskmaster is responsible for giving HDFC the scale it has today. The country's largest mortgage player had assets worth Rs 81,000 crore at the end of March 2008. The group's total assets were estimated at over Rs 94,000 crore.
Homi R Khusrokhan
Homi R Khusrokhan, appointed special advisor to the Satyam board, has rich experience in leading very large companies, across industries. After graduating in commerce from the Sydenham College of Commerce & Economics in 1963, he qualified as a chartered accountant in India in 1966 and did his post-graduation studies at the London School of Economics & Political Science. He retired as managing director, Tata Chemicals, in December 2008 and prior to that was managing director of Tata Tea. Before joining the Tata group in 2001, Khusrokhan worked for Glaxo Laboratories (India) for 29 years, and was managing director of both Glaxo and Wellcome (India). He has been the president of the Organisation of Pharmaceutical Producers of India and the vice-president of the Bombay Chamber of Commerce and Industry. He continues to be on the boards of several Tata companies in non-executive capacity.
Partho S Datta
Partho S Datta, appointed special advisor to the Satyam board, is a chartered accountant with over 33 years of corporate experience. He began with Dunlop India. Later, he joined Indian Aluminium (Indal), where he worked in various functions, including in the parent company of Indal in Canada, before becoming the director and chief financial officer. During his tenure at Indal, the company got several awards for business performance and presentation of accounts.
In 1998, he joined the Murugappa group of Chennai as group director, finance, and a member of the group supervisory board. The group won the prestigious World Family Business award during his tenure and also saw significant advances in corporate governance and professionalisation. He has been involved with industry associations at both national and regional levels and with several companies as non-executive director.
SB Mainak
SB Mainak is professor (Life), National Insurance Academy. He joined Lovelock and Lewes, chartered accountants, as a qualified accountant and is experienced in auditing multinational companies, financial institutions and management consultants.
He joined LIC in the cadre of AAO in 1983 as a direct recruit under the CA batch. Later, he was posted in the investment department in the cadre of deputy secretary and headed the new Equity Research Cell of LIC. Over the years, he has worked in various areas, namely, fund management, equity research, secondary market operations and insurance portfolio management. He was the chief of treasury operations of LIC for three years and then asked to set up the new Pension Scheme Fund Management Department. On his promotion in the cadre of executive director, he was posted on deputation to NIA as Professor.
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T N Manoharan
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