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Monsoon Of Misgiving
It never rains, but it pours. No, we are not talking about the downpour in Mumbai, but the trouble raining down equally heavily on a few in Club CEO. Purnendu ''PC'' Chatterjee-ace investor, George Soros' disciple, and Chairman of The Chatterjee Group-landed smack into trouble last fortnight when he let it slip that he held a 13 per cent stake in Modi Rubber. SEBI promptly sat up and asked him why, as required by law, he had not made an open offer once his holdings in MRL crossed 5 per cent. Like BT, SEBI's still waiting for an answer from the elusive investor.
Of company, Chatterjee lacked little. Rakesh Agarwal, Managing Director, Bayer ABS, earned the distinction being the first promoter-MD to be prosecuted by SEBI for insider trading. His folly: asking his brother-in-law I.P. Kedia to mop up 4.06 lakh shares of ABS Industries months ahead of the company's purchase by Bayer Industries. After four-and-a-half years of investigation and trial, SEBI pronounced Agarwal guilty. (Incidentally, the Securities and Exchange Commission in the US had made a similar charge against PC in 1993.) Punishment for the crime: a Rs 34 lakh penalty and criminal prosecution. He probably didn't mean to, but Satyam Computers' dapper Chairman Ramalinga Raju managed to raise the hackles of officials at the Software Technology Park of India over his company's export figures. The STPI accused Raju of inflating export figures for Hyderabad at the cost of Satyam's other development centres in places like Pune, Chennai, and Bangalore. But why would Raju want to do that? Some peeved STPI officials say that's a bid to please Andhra Pradesh's Chief Minister Chandrababu 'Cyber' Naidu. Now, only if they could make trouble-proof raincoats... Hot Shot
You can't get a better posterboy for the new economy. In the mid-nineties, while still in high school in Dubai, India-born Fareed Ahmed landed his first job with Motorola. He left in 1997 to enrol in Oklahoma University; while there he founded Crea Corporation; and in 1999, sold it to IBF Inc. and became the latter's director of international operations. When IBF decided to focus on the US market, he decided to make IBF India, now headquartered in Chennai, an independent entity. ''You can't just hire and fire people in India,'' says Ahmed. His business model remains the same as IBF Inc's: develop an online tech offering and sell it. In eight months of independent existence IBF India has created five offerings and sold one-that, claims Ahmed, will take care of fund-requirements for the next two years. And purely for the record, he finally graduated in late 2000. Career Planner
Head-hunting is the last domain you'd
expect to find a crack media planner in, but that's exactly where HTA's
senior vice-president and executive media director, Ketaki Gupte is
headed. The rationale behind the change for Gupte was the desire to do
something other than advertising. ''I've been married for 22 years, and
worked with HTA for 22 years. I couldn't change my husband, so I decided
that I might as well change my job,'' jokes the lady. Next stop is
placement firm Korn/Ferry where she is to head the consumer practice.
''It's the biggest gamble of my life,'' concedes Gupte. But with an open
offer to return anytime she chooses to, from CEO Mike Khanna and WPP head
Martin Sorrell, she certainly doesn't have to lose sleep on that count. |
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