Government appoints Kiran Karnik as Satyam chairman

The government on Friday announced the appointment of Nasscom past-president Kiran Karnik as chairman of its six-member board a day after A S Murty was named as the CEO of the company.

The announcement was made by corporate affairs minister P C Gupta. Gupta, said that the probe of the government had extended to cover 325 companies and 25 individuals linked to Satyam as well as the auditor Price Waterhouse.

The government initially had constituted the board of Satyam with three members that includes Karnik along with HDFC chairman Deepak Parekh and past presiding officer of Securities Appellate Tribunal C Achutan. Later, government expanded the Satyam''s board by nominating three more members including CII chief mentor Tarun Das along with LIC nominee S Balakrishna Mainak and past president of ICAI T N Manoharan.

Karnik, who will head Satyam, was Nasscom president in 2001-02 and has earlier held several key positions in the IT sector.

Apart from this, the minister also said that there was nothing wrong in Satyam''s new CEO A S Murty selling about 40,000 shares of the company days ahead of an acquisition announcement.

Rs.1,750-cr. package for primary agricultural cooperative societies

For around 4,110 primary agricultural cooperative societies (PACS) in the State, a revival package of about Rs.1,750 crore has been worked out. Of the total amount, the share of the Centre would be Rs.1,344.53 crore; State government - Rs. 207.51 and PACS - Rs. 196.95 crore. The Centre''s share will be released through the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD). The total assistance amount of Rs.1,748.99 crore was finalised at a State-level Implementing and Monitoring Committee meeting last month. This would cover 4,111 PACS affiliated to 22 District Central Cooperative Banks (DCCBs).

The State government and the NABARD signed a memorandum of understanding in January last year to implement the recommendations of the Task Force. On Wednesday, the State government sanctioned Rs.207.51 crore.

The decision of the committee was based on the proposals of the district-level panels, which were framed subsequent to the special audit of 4,337 PACS. However, only 4,111 societies were eligible for the assistance. In view of the stipulation that the Centre would release 25 per cent of its share only after the State government met all its commitments that includes the holding the elections to cooperative bodies, the State-level committee, at its meeting, approved an amount of Rs.1,008.4 crore as the share of the Union government.

JM Financial MF declares dividend

JM Financial Mutual Fund has declared dividend under JM Interval Fund-Quarterly Plan 3 (JM-QIF-3) dividend option and fixed. The record date for the same is February 9, 2009. The fund house has decided to distribute realized appreciation in the NAV of the plan/option till the record date as dividend (inclusive of dividend distribution tax) in both regular and institutional plan under the scheme.

JM Interval Fund-Quarterly Plan 3 is a debt oriented interval fund with an aim to seek to generate predictable returns over a predetermined period by investing in a portfolio of fixed income securities normally maturing in line with the time profile of the respective plans.