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Showing posts from January, 2009

Satyam - Corporate Governance

It was around 10 or 11 am in the morning. I was zipping through channels and there in CNBC came the Breaking News of the day - Ramalinga Raju resigned as the chairman of Satyam Computers. I did not own shares of Satyam but I immediately logged into my stock broking portal to check my portfolio and then assess which stocks of mine will take the hit. I decided against exiting my stocks though I saw the decline of shares in the short term. Being a retail investor, my exposure to stocks was limited. But what about those who had direct exposure to Satyam stocks - Fidelity, Aberdeen those investors who till now believed Satyam was a frontrunner of the IT stocks in NSE and BSE. This is a fundamental issue of trust and faith which has been shaken. I remember the days when Satyam would rally the IT stocks after a down trend. 3% operating margin is mind boggling and Raju mentioning that no one except him knew about this is bull shit. When VPs and Head of Practice/Vertical manage the P/L for the

Emotions and Movies

This December, I spent a lot of time taking care of my beloved ones - in the process I went to quiet a few movies. My travel to Bangalore and back also provided me more free time to read, watch movies, know co travelers and more importantly reflect on the year that just went by. I saw four movies in this timespan - Vaaranam Aaayiram, Boiler Room, Abhiyum Naanum and Death Race. I could not help noticing that all of these movies focussed on family sentiments. All these movies focus on the relationship between a Father and his son/daughter. Vaaranam Aaayiram is a classic that lets the son get nostalgic about his father and the wonderful learnings imparted to him. I watched it twice and loved the sentiments and the freshness of the movie. Boiler Room is an English flick where a Son who is a college dropout and successful in his business (runs a casino in the backyard), tries to shun his business to please his Dad who is a Judge and becomes an investment banker with a tier 2 company. Over