New Satyam board says will take time to get on track

By Devidutta Tripathy

HYDERABAD, India (Reuters) - Satyam Computer Services needs to restate its accounts and appoint senior people as soon as possible to get back on track, but this will take time, the new board of the fraud-hit Indian company said.

Shares in Satyam jumped as much as two-thirds on Monday on expectations the new board, the first three members of which were appointed by the government on Sunday, would rescue the company in the wake of India's biggest corporate scandal.

"It depends on how soon we get a CEO, it depends on how soon we get a good financial manager and it depends on how soon we get the accounts restated," Deepak Parekh, a senior banker, told reporters after the first meeting of the new board.

"Account restatement is ... one of the biggest issues we have because no one has faith in the numbers that are being produced so far," he said.

Satyam founder Ramalinga Raju resigned as chairman last week, saying profits had been falsified for years and about $1 billion or 94 percent of the company's cash and bank balances at the end of September did not exist.

"If you have to go through four, five years of accounts ... it is going to take time by the auditors," Parekh said, adding he hoped to appoint a new accounting firm within 48 hours.

The new board met at Satyam headquarters in the southern city of Hyderabad to lay out a roadmap for the survival of the company after the fraud hit Satyam's business prospects and triggered worries some clients may cancel contracts

"The option of a merger is always open," Parekh said in response to a question.