Seems like a repeat of Enron has struck in India – dropping the Indian share market by approx 7%.

Satyam (which in India means “Truth”) released information that over the past few years the company’s profits were over-inflated. In fact, nearly US$1 billion in the company’s book is fictitious – summing up to nearly 95% of the company’s cash.

Founder and Chairman, Ramalinga Raju said that none of the other board members were aware of this fraud. He said “it was like riding a tiger, not knowing how to get off without being eaten”. He will be facing some legal action and says that he is prepared for it.

Some say more companies will soon unfold as people believe that similar companies have inflated their profits. PriceWaterhouseCoopers, are the auditors for Satyam and had nothing to say about this matter.

With this recent event, it is unlikely that people will continue to outsource to India and further investments in this country will be thought about twice. It also questions the corporate governance in their lack of scrutiny on this matter.

With the way India works in terms of it’s bribery and false release of public information – I’m not surprised that they have gone this far. But I do wonder why they eventually cracked.

Satyam share prices dropped nearly 80% after the above information was released.

No doubt some of you have heard that Jerry Yang has stepped down from Yahoo!.

Jerry joined Yahoo at a tough time back in July 2007. 7 months after his appointment, and Yahoo had to lay off staff in Feb 08. And as I mentioned earlier, Yahoo his expecting to lay off more staff by Christmas.

Shortly after the Feb 08 layoffs, there was the Microsoft bid. I think Jerry should have taken that deal. I mean, most of the analyst thought it was a dumb thing not to. Now, Yahoo! is worth a third of Microsoft’s initial US$45 billion offer.

Then there was the opportunity to partner up with Google and have Google sell their ads, which would have added an approximate $800 million a year to Yahoo’s bottom line. However Google pulled the plug on that deal due to regulatory objections. On Nov 11th, the share price for Yahoo! went up as analysts believed that Microsoft would make another offer since Google threw Yahoo out on the highway. But those rumours were dismissed by Yahoo spokesman Tracy Schmaler – who also denied that Jerry was on his way out.

We then have Carl Icahn, the man who owned a good amount of Yahoo! shares and pressed hard to get Yahoo back in talking with Microsoft for a takeover bid. With that failing, Carl tried to get on the Yahoo!’s board of directors. Yang and the board at that time put a notice on Yahoo!’s homepage suggesting that Carl didn’t know what he was talking about. Days after Carl got his seat on the board.

Sorry Jerry – but being a founder of a giant company doesn’t always mean that you’re the best CEO to run it. Back to Chief Yahoo! is it for you.

Now that Jerry is out, what is Carl’s plans for Yahoo!?

Yahoo!’s stock jumped up after Jerry’s announcement, on the hope that Microsoft may come back with another offer.

Steve, US$45 billion divided by 3 – it’s not hard.

Yahoo hasn’t done overly well when it released its figures to the public. Their net profit for Q3 2008 was US$54 million down from US$151 million for the same period in 2007.

Overall revenue figure of SU$1.78 billion is only 1% increase from Q3 last year.

Yahoo has struggled compared to the like of Google, MySpace and Facebook. Seems like the worldwide crises have hit Yahoo! pretty hard as people close their wallets on advertising budgets.

The company announced that they expect “to reduce its global workforce by at least 10% during Q4 of 2008″. This will reduce their costs by approx $400 million. When asked during a phone interview when Yahoo! intends to do so, Jerry Yang, CEO of Yahoo!, said “We want to do it before the holidays”.

Yahoo is yet to get an approval from the US Justice Department in regards to their deal with Google and if it can go ahead. A decision is expected soon.

However, should the deal go through Yahoo would make millions (as I am sure Google would too). Over the last 3 months Yahoo!’s shares have dropped over 40%, but rose 7% (in after trading hours) when the layoffs were announced.

Maybe Microsoft can pull them out from this mess – this time at say $15 a share? Come on Steve Ballmer, make that phone call!