Raju got Rs 1,230 cr by pledging shares; now worth Rs 66 cr

Disgraced Satyam founder B Ramalinga Raju garnered Rs 1,230 crore, much before disclosing the accounts fudging to inflate profits, through pledging of promoters shares, which are now worth just about Rs 66 crore.

Disgraced Satyam founder B Ramalinga Raju garnered Rs 1,230 crore, much before disclosing the accounts fudging to inflate profits, through pledging of promoters shares, which are now worth just about Rs 66 crore.

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As the enormity of the fraud is surfacing, with the government, regulators and state authorities tightening their noose on Raju and the firm, information available with stock authorities reveal that all the promoter shares held through SRSR Holding were pledged for Rs 1,230 crore. As per the statutory regulatory filings, the process of pledging started way back in September 2006, when promoter entity SRSR Holding held over 2.78 crore shares, comprising a 8.51 per cent of total equity.

As on September-end, 2006, these shares were worth Rs 2,275 crore at a price of Rs 818 a share. However, at the current price of Rs 23.85, the equity pledged with institutions is worth just about Rs 66 crore.

These shares were worth about Rs 500 crore a day before Raju made the disclosure about cooking of accounts and financial fraud, with scrip ruling low at Rs 179 a share on January 6. From the very next day, stock started plunging and touched an intra-day low of Rs 6.30 a share on Friday. In his disclosure, Raju had said that "in the last two years, a net amount of Rs 1,230 crore was arranged to Satyam (not reflected in the books of Satyam) to keep the operations going by resorting to pledging all the promoters shares..." In a separate regulatory filing, Satyam has said that all the promoters shares were pledged with institutional lenders over a period of time since September 2006. With the company hitting the downhill path after the Maytas fiasco on December 16, the lenders started selling the pledged shares, bringing down the promoters' equity to 2.34 per cent as of now.