Saturday, March 28, 2009

Crompton Grief, DLF Unlimited

Crompton Greaves lives up to its name. It wants to leave the non-promoter shareholders greiving. All surplus cash left in the company is going to be used to buy out a family company. Usual Indian corporate story. No different from what DLF now wants to do by buying out its family owned company called DLF Assets Ltd (DAL?). First create a family owned company to distort the listed company financials. Then, after some time, use the vehicle to siphon out cash from the listed company. Use friendly audit firms to give valuations, certifications etc.
Shattered accountants ki Jai Ho!!
RBI helps out the banks by diluting the reporting and asset classification standards. How nice. You change the name of the disease and all is suddenly well.
The Institute of Shattered Accountants of India joins the party by diluting (scrapping?) the MTM norms, so that the Indian companies can still show profits in the financial years ending March 2009 and 2010. Of course, this will all be blessed by the equity research analysts, who will live up to their reputation of endorsing the management dialogues and keeping their jobs alive. With balance sheets going to be available only by September, no one will know what the Shattered accountants have done to the shareholders.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

What does MTM stand for?

-- RKB

Anonymous said...

It means "Mark To Market". Simply said, if the price you paid for a share or a bond is 100rupees and the present market price is 80 rupees, you can only carry the asset at 80 rupees. In other words, you are 'marking' the asset to present market price. The loss is on paper, at this point in time.
When you actually sell it, you may get a third price altogether,
Hope this explains.
Thanks for asking