By IANS,
Bangalore : India’s fourth largest IT bellwether Satyam Computer Services plans to buy back shares, ostensibly to prevent a hostile takeover of the company amidst such rumours in the marketplace.
In a notification to the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) Thursday, the Hyderabad-based software exporter said it had convened a board meeting Dec 29 to consider the proposal for buyback of shares.
Currently, Satyam’s promoters including founder-chairman B. Ramalinga Raju and family members hold 8.5 percent of the stake in the listed firm, while the public holds 71.8 percent and others 19.46 percent. Of the public holding, foreign institutional investors (FIIs) have 48.22 percent and Indian financial institutions 12.91 percent.
In a dramatic development Wednesday, the beleaguered IT firm called off plans to acquire real estate and infrastructure firms – Maytas Properties and Maytas Infra – for $1.6 billion (Rs.79.2 billion) after investors and analysts said it was an attempt to “bail out” the two cash-starved firms.
The two Maytas firms are run by Ramalinga Raju’s sons Rama Raju and Teja Raju.
In a related development, the company informed the BSE that its compensation committee allotted 16,348 equity shares to employees under the stock option.
“As a result, the paid-up share capital has gone up to 673,884,281 equity shares from 673,867,933 shares of Rs.2 each, aggregating Rs.1,347,768,562 from Rs.1,347,735,866,” the company said in a notification.