On Corporate (mis)governance.

This   corporate news bulletin which was quite overlooked 3 months ago suddenly became very significant in the present context.

“Satyam Computer Services Ltd. (NYSE: SAY), a leading global consulting and information technology services provider, has won the coveted Golden Peacock Global Award for Excellence in Corporate Governance for 2008. ……..

"It is a real honor for Satyam to receive such a prestigious award,” said Srinivas Vadlamani, Satyam CFO. “It is a testament to our efforts to continually innovate and advance corporate governance best practices in our industry and around the world."

http://www.satyam.com/media/pr6Sep08.asp

I remember one of the recipients of Malcom Baldridge award filed for Bankruptsy immediate after they won the award. J.  Some of these awards seem to be jinxed.

Present woes of Satyam are well documented and do not deserve any more space. So   this post is not about Satyam’s present state of affairs.

There was an interesting monologue from Suhel Seth on Governance or lack of it in India during the many debates in our 24 * 7 TV studios after the Mumbai Terror attack.   Suhel Seth was seething.   (Very rightly so.).  . The Business community (the booted and suited ones) & the Anchors were all over the political class.  They had diagnosed what ails our govt. and political class and had clear prescriptive solutions.

It was reported in NDTV, that Maytas   real value is Rs. 21 crore. How can someone with 8 % of shares utilize $ 1? 6 Billion to buy highly overrated companies promoted by their own family. It is interesting to note that Satyam board comprises four academicians, a former Union Cabinet Secretary and one of the founders of Intel’s Pentium chip. Probably the slick marketing of the resumes of   these worthies had won for Satyam the Golden Peacock award for corporate governance this year

One of them Prof. Krishna Palepu’s bio data in HBS website   reads “In the area of corporate governance, Professor Palepu’s work focuses on how to make corporate boards more effective, and on improving corporate disclosure. Professor Palepu teaches these topics in several HBS executive education programmes aimed at members of corporate boards: Making Corporate Boards More Effective, Audit Committees in a New Era of Governance. He also co-led Harvard Business School’s Corporate Governance, Leadership, and Values initiative, launched in response to the recent wave of corporate scandals and governance failures.”  It was a different matter, that Mr. Palepu was a longtime advisor to Satyam. 

Some time back Union Finance Minister P.Chidambaram stated in the floor of Parliament that “the big industrial companies/borrowers have been the top defaulters."  The amount owed by Indian Business houses was a staggering Rs. 50,000 crores.  It was quite amusing to read “Responding to members' demand that the names of big defaulters be published, he said there was a provision in the Reserve Bank of India Act that mandated confidentiality.”   One should see this in contrast to the ways and means Banks adopt against poor peasants of this country driving them to Suicides.

 How come the Indian Public don’t get to hear any condemnation from the likes of   CIIs / ASSOCHAMs /   Tavleen Singh’s and Suhel Seths ? 

We Indians do deserve better Governance, Government and certainly better political leaders. Also don’t   we deserve better Business persons?   Sadly the voices that keep harping on Politicians and Govt are never raised against their own ilk, even when they are caught with their pants down.

  Why can’t they start the changes they want to see in others with themselves?

I wonder how many of the present day Business houses, have  the moral right to preach to a pick pocket.  (Leave alone other sections of the society).