Mahindra Satyam, Tech Mahindra merger likely in 8-9 months

Hyderabad, April 24 (IANS) The merger of Mahindra Satyam and Tech Mahindra will take between eight and nine months to complete, said Mahindra Satyam CEO C.P. Gurnani here Tuesday.

The annual general meetings (AGMs) of the two companies would be held in June to consider the merger proposal, he told reporters here.

Notices for the AGMs have been given, Gurnani said, adding that the whole process would take about 8-9 months.

To a query, he said the company was not anticipating any major hurdle in the way of the merger.

He, however, refused to indicate the exact time frame for the completion of the merger process.

He said the merger proposal and the swap ratio had already received the nod of shareholders.

In March, the boards of the two companies approved the merger at a share swap ratio of 2:17, giving shareholders two Tech Mahindra shares for every 17 owned in Mahindra Satyam.

While announcing the merger, Vineet Nayyar, vice-chairman and managing director of Tech Mahindra and chairman of Mahindra Satyam, had said that the merger would generate revenue "a tad shy of $3 billion".

The merger is expected to make the new entity India's fifth-largest IT company.

The merger was proposed after the Anand Mahindra-owned Tech Mahindra purchased Satyam Computer Service Limited in 2009 and re-branded it as Mahindra Satyam.

The government auctioned the Hyderabad-based IT services firm Satyam after its founder and chairman B. Ramalinga Raju admitted to India's biggest accounting fraud.

However, the merger was put on hold in view of the investigations into the fraud by various agencies.