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Sebi to probe Murty’s share sale
The Securities Exchange Board of India (SEBI) will investigate the sale of shares of Satyam Computers by its newly-appointed chief executive officer, AS Murty.
The Securities Exchange Board of India (SEBI) will investigate the sale of shares of Satyam Computers by its newly-appointed chief executive officer, AS Murty.
Murty sold 40,000 shares of the company worth approximately Rs 90 lakh between December 12 and 16, 2008, according to disclosures made by the company to the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE).
If Murty had not sold the shares prior to the announcement, their value based on Thursday’s closing price of Rs 46.25,
would be Rs 18.5 lakh — a fifth of what he got when he sold them.
On December 16, the former board of Satyam, under the chairmanship of its now-jailed founder B Ramalinga Raju, decided to acquire family-dominated Maytas Infrastructure and family-owned Maytas Properties for $1.6 billion (Rs 8,000 crore), which eventually led to Raju’s admission of fraud.
While corporate affairs minister P.C. Gupta has said there was nothing unusual about the sale of shares, an official familiar with the investigations said SEBI would probe Murty’s trading of shares during the period.
The last time Murty — the global delivery head before the new assignment — sold shares was in June 2008, when he offloaded 3,200 shares worth about Rs 15.9 lakh.
