Karnik wants early exit from Satyam

KOLKATA: Satyam chairman Kiran Karnik on Sunday said he is keen to step down from the firm���s board ���at the earliest possible opportunity��� so that its new owner can run the show as it deems fit.

Speaking to TOI a day before financial bids for Satyam are opened, the former Nasscom president said that although he would not leave the company in the lurch and be there to help it make a painless transition to a new management, he has decided not to stay on one day beyond necessary.

Satyam has receivables worth Rs 2,000 crore in the January-March period from new and existing clients, Karnik added. ���We have had Rs 2,000 crore collections from new work and some of the existing clients over the three months (January-March) ... some clients have left but we have got some new work as well. The rate of receivables per month was about $140-150 million,��� he said.

This relatively comfortable cash balance will provide some succour to the new owner, said a board member.

Karnik, who took over as Satyam chairman on February 6, a month after Ramalinga Raju���s fraud came to light, however, did not indicate a timeframe within which the six-member government-appointed board would be dissolved. Apart from Karnik, some of the other prominent directors on the Satyam board are HDFC chairman Deepak Parekh, CII chief mentor Tarun Das and former Securities Appellate Tribunal presiding officer C Achuthan.

���Some of the government-appointed directors will, in any case, step down so that the new owner can have a majority on the board. We have not yet decided the timing about when this would be done,��� Karnik said. ���However, because of the ongoing court cases, it is quite possible that the new owner may prefer to have someone from the government on the board,��� he added.

Karnik said that he would not like to draw comparisons between the challenges posed by the outsourcing issues during his Nasscom stint and the current Satyam assignment as the two were unique in their own way.