Sun Jan 18, 2009
MUMBAI (Reuters) - The new board of fraud-hit Satyam Computer Services Ltd is looking to appoint up to three investment banks to explore the possibility of finding a buyer for the Indian outsourcer, the Economic Times reported on Monday.
It said Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank were under consideration and a final decision is likely this week, the newspaper said, citing unnamed people familiar with the development.
A government-appointed six-member board, which met in the southern city of Hyderabad on Saturday, has decided to talk directly to Satyam's big overseas clients to calm their concerns in the wake of the country's worst corporate scandal, it said.
The board will begin calling key clients including General Electric, American Express, Citigroup, it said.
A Satyam spokeswoman said on Monday U.S.-based insurer State Farm Insurance Co has terminated its contract, confirming a report in the Mint newspaper.
Satyam, India's No. 4 software services exporter, has been battling for survival since Ramalinga Raju resigned as chairman earlier this month, revealing profits had been falsified for years and that $1 billion of cash on the books did not exist.
On Sunday, a metropolitan court ordered the former chairman, managing director and chief financial officer of Satyam to be taken into police custody for four days from Sunday.
Separately, the Economic Times said engineering and construction firm Larsen & Toubro Ltd, which holds about 4 percent of Satyam, was interested in acquiring the company.
"I don't want to be a mute spectator to Satyam's value being eroded. If we can't play an active role, we wouldn't want to take a board position," the newspaper quoted Larsen's chairman A.M. Naik as saying.
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