The So-Called Experts....

It is fascinating to see how everyone acts like an expert when it comes to the Stock Market, and yeah, i tend to be one of them! Thanks to the newly installed TV screens at the office cafeteria, markets seem to have become a common topic of discussion. And why just markets, we have a solution for anything :P. Well let's leave that topic for another day!

The Satyam fiasco has really had a hard hitting impact on the common man, as far as confidence in the whole investment scenario goes. It's painful, yet funny(quite a paradox) to see unwavering faith turn to hatred in no-time! This indeed was the feeling of the 53,000 employees. (Is that figure really true? Lets assume so for now...)

I still remember those days of 1999-01, when I used to see stories of Satyam and its great poster boy, Ramalinga Raju, in most of the magazine or Newspaper articles. I felt pride in looking at growth stories of Indian IT services and how the rags become riches in no time. I carried that pride till date but it has dented after revelation of multi million frauds in Satyam financial statements.

Raju has been, for a long time, a beacon of hope for aspiring and ambitious youngsters. From a small time entrepreneur, to an IT Czar, the journey is quite fascinating! Satyam, founded in 1987, started off with a modest employee base of 20 and through the next 15 years spread its arms of influence to over 65 countries. And for someone running such a massive Info Tech organization, he does not have any formal engineering background. His achievements speak volumes about the good work done by him

1) IT Man of the Year - 2000
2) Asia's Business Leader of the Year-2002
3) Corporate Citizen of the Year - 2002
4) E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year. - 1999 & 2007

And perhaps, greed got the better of him. This golden period was followed by gross mis-appropriation of funds, hawala transactions, benami bank accounts.. The list is endless! It looked like Raju had used every trick in the book before coming out in the open about the mega fraud which saw the company's stock price plummet from 180 to the all time low of 6, that too in a matter of 3 days!
I try my best to retain faith in the IT industry, and BOOM! The World Bank made public it has barred Wipro Technologies since 2007.

And with all this we were discussing at the lunch table, a few days back, about 150 being a good price to buy Satyam shares. Anybody in for Wipro for the next few days?