Case Study: Satyam Computers, Anatomy of a Corporate Fraud

A forensic case study of Satyam Computer Services written for experienced retail investors, active traders and HNIs. In January 2009 its chairman confessed that the balance sheet of India's fourth largest IT company was inflated by more than ₹7,000 crore, most of it cash that did not exist. This course dissects that fraud from the investor's chair. You rebuild Satyam's reported financials, test idle cash against other income, receivables against revenue and tax paid against profit, and run the Beneish M-Score to see which forensic models would have flagged the company and which would have missed it. You read the market's own signals, from promoter pledges in shareholding filings to the NYSE reaction to the Maytas deal and the collapse of 7 January 2009 on the NSE and BSE. You count the damage, examine how Tech Mahindra priced a company whose books could not be trusted, and compare the class action recovery US ADR holders won with what Indian shareholders received. The course closes with a cash reality screen on Screener.in, position sizing and exit rules for governance shocks, and a full forensic checklist you can run on any listed Indian company.