In a move to restore its lost prestige, the newly organised board of Satyam has received the nod of market regulator to sell its 51% stake through global bidding.
Market Watchdog, the Security and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) on Thursday showed green signal to the board of the company to begin the process of global bidding. For attracting more and more global bidders, SEBI has eased the norms and granted a special status for bidding process.
The process of bidding would begin soon, said a board member of Satyam to the reporters.
According to Indian law, the sale process would be held in two steps. In the first step, a chosen investor would have to acquire at least 31% stake of Satyam and in the second step, the selected company would have to purchase remaining 20% share through a public offer at the highest bid price.
Under an eased norms and special status, if the investor fails to acquire the 51% stake after closing of the open offer, it would be able to subscribe additional equity shares to fulfill the quota, Satyam said in a statement.
This special status is applied on those firms, which members of board are disgraced from the post and state or central government appoints new members to continue the operation of the company.
All the previous members of the board have already left the board and government has appointed new members in the board.
Moreover, for speedy process, the takeover panel of SEBI would not review the sell-off proposal except vetting and clearing the process, added Satyam in the statement.
To be eligible for the bidders, the SEBI stated, the bidders must have at least a net asset value of over Rs.150-crore and a minimum three-year lock-in period that means the winning bidders cannot sell the stake of the Satyam before three years.
For making transparent global bidding process, SEBI would appoint a former judge of the Supreme Court for supervision.
At present, Engineering giant and infrastructure major Larsen & Toubro (L&T) that already holds 12% stake in the company, and B K Modi led Spice group and Hinduja Group have shown interest to acquire the company while government wants more options for bidding at global level.
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