Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Nifty tanks below 2900; Satyam plunges 80%

MUMBAI – There was no respite for Indian markets since the Satyam Computer Services fraud came to light. Heavy selling was seen across the board as sentiments turned bearish on the mockery of corporate governance by the IT major.

Ramalinga Raju, chairman of Satyam Computers resigned from his post and confessed to indulging in fraudulent activities like inflating the books for several years.

Raju has written a letter to the board giving details of the balance sheet. Balance Sheet has inflated cash balances of Rs 5040 crore and accrued interest of Rs 376 crore is non-existent. Rs 1230 crore was arranged to Satyam and is not reflected in the books. As per the revelations, second Quarter numbers were inflated to Rs 2700 crore vs Rs 2112 crore actual numbers. No board member had any knowledge of the real situation of the books.

Benchmarks were witnessing a free fall and had conveniently breached their intermediate support levels. At 1:45 pm, Bombay Stock Exchange’s Sensex was at 9,549.69, down 786.24 points or 7.61 per cent. The index fell to an intra-day low of 9510.15 and a high of 10469.72.

National Stock Exchange’s Nifty was at 2915.10, down 6.35 per cent or 197.70 points. The broader index breached its 2900 mark and fell to an intra-day low of 2888.20 and a high of 3147.20.

Satyam Computers (-81.57%), Jaiprakash Associates (-27.71%), Reliance Communications (-17.62%), Reliance Infrastructure (-14.99%) and DLF (-14.58%) were amongst the major Sensex losers.

Realty stocks were the worst hit followed by IT stocks. BSE Realty Index was down 17.95 per cent and BSE IT Index fell 10.27 per cent.

Source: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Markets/Stocks/Market_News/Nifty_tanks_below_2900_Satyam_plunges_80/articleshow/3946710.cms

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