Cat among the pigeons

The cat is out of the bag. This time it is a wild one. Raju, whom the world thought had “ban gaya gentleman”, by blocking the Satyam-Maytas deal, has admitted to fraudulent accounting. While facing Business channels or at investor forums, he never needed to worry whether the company could make the figures. Why make figures when one can make them up? In fact, this blogger has learnt that Aravind Adiga (who wrote “The White Tiger”), Arundhati Roy, Salman Rushdie and their ilk are now worried that the next year’s award for works of fiction would certainly go to the financials of Satyam!

If one reads his letter to the Board of Directors of his company, one can understand that the poor chap had been riding a tiger, supposedly to protect himself from being eaten by other wilder, bigger beasts of the corporate jungle by way of acquisitions. The poor chap also explains how what began as a small adjustment grew large over the years. So in an effort to bridge the yawning gap, he had to think out of the box and come up with this ingenious idea of Satyam-Maytas deal, which would then make the large gap look like a small crack in the wall all over again! As about the selection of Maytas, well, which Papa doesn’t do his bit (this was a large bite, though) for his rising son?

The letter also describes how difficult it is to get off a riding tiger, lest he eat him up! Well, one always thought riding it would be a danger in itself! But in his own admission, it wasn’t – he rode it for years, in fact, her rode it all along, as it grew up. So he wished to ride it until it became older and perhaps lost all its teeth, and then he could get off it without any fear. But it was not to be. The angry voices of the small fry and the business media channels, who amplified them, forced the poor guy to alight much earlier. Now one wonders whether the wild cat will eat him or go for the millions of small investors and employees of the company, instead. But seeing the mayhem on the Satyam counter, the bloodshed seems to be due to the latter, while the one who rode the tiger will be tried by an ass named ‘law’.

Investors would now eagerly wait to see if SEBI and our laws have the requisite teeth or whether they are toothless too so our poor chap can save himself from biting beasts of the jungle. Poor chap. Our “experts” are already saying that we need a law to handle this kind of a “financial terror” unleashed on the general public at large. Isn’t it amazing that we have thousands of archaic, draconian laws but not the law that we need to have?

I can now understand why some CA’s never appreciated the creativity in my writing and insisted that their jobs were more creative than my whatnonsanz. I understand it now - Creative Accountancy by CAs, if I may say so is the most elegant expansion, actually a euphemism at best, of CA, (considering that the other forms like “Chaloo Accountants”, “Chor Accountants”…and..believe me, there are other worse forms doing the rounds, that the editor of this blog has serious objections with, since there is every likelihood of children reading this post thinking it is about domestic pets, besides pets themselves who read my posts).

In spite of my Monkey attack post, one fails to understand why the investing community was shocked to learn about what was already suspected? Could we call this a black swan event too? Was it not, like Mavin explained in his post, not predicable and yet so shocking? Would there be many more corporate czars riding tigers? I just hope the population of such tigers don’t exceed the population of the tigers in the wild. Cannot be “paper tigers”, shall we call them “vapour tigers” because that is what happens to the investment? So when this cat is out of the bag, it will be a wild cat among the pigeons, the small investors, that is!

“Do you hold any Satyam shares?”, I got mails from concerned friends and fellow-bloggers. “No!” I told them proudly. And since I am not even planning to write a fiction book, or be a contender for the Man Booker Prize, which is certainly going to the financials of Satyam this year, I decided to celebrate it with a special dessert after dinner tonight.

“How about some hot chocolate fudge for dessert tonight?”, I asked my wife. Fudge would certainly be Raju's favorite dessert, I guess!

Raju, on the other hand, may now have to eat crow!