Fortunately, the Satyam deal with Matyas was “salvageable”.
It could have been saved only if “the deal had
been allowed to go through, as Satyam would have been
able to use Maytas’ assets to shore up its own books”.
Raju, who showed “artificial” cash on his books, had
planned to use this “non-existent” cash to acquire the two
Maytas companies. As part of their “tunneling” strategy,
the Satyam promoters had substantially reduced their
holdings in company from 25.6% in March 2001 to
8.74% in March 2008. Furthermore, as the promoters
held a very small percentage of equity (mere 2.18%) on
December 2008, as shown in Table 2, the concern was
that poor performance would result in a takeover bid,
thereby exposing the gap. It was like “riding a tiger, not
knowing how to get off without being eaten”. The
aborted Maytas acquisition deal was the final, desperate
effort to cover up the accounting fraud by bringing some
real assets into the business. When that failed, Raju confessed
the fraud. Given the stake the Rajus held in Matyas,
pursuing the deal would not have been terribly difficult
from the perspective of the Raju family. Unlike
Enron, which sank due to agency problem, Satyam was
brought to its knee due to tunneling. The company with a
huge cash pile, with promoters still controlling it with a
small per cent of shares (less than 3%), and trying to ab