Ajay Shah has a detailed post on the recent fracas about Satyam Computers.

He writes,

The recent fracas about Satyam Computers is a really fascinating story. Satyam (a computer software firm) was about to buy two real estate companies: a listed company named Maytas Infra and an unlisted company named Maytas Properties. They were going to pay roughly $1.6 billion.

This was a troublesome transaction from so many points of view. First, it would deplete the firm of cash. Second, it would mean defocusing the firm away from software towards real estate. Even if diversification into real estate were the goal, there were better acquisition targets around like Unitech. The case for buying these two companies seems to have been influenced by the shares held in the two companies by managers of Satyam.

The Indian construction industry is very large and is a growth driver to various sectors of the economy. It employs about 31 million persons – second only to agriculture in terms of employment. It consumes 40-50% of the National Plan outlay and contributes 20% of GDP

The cement industry is the most visible beneficiary of the housing and construction boom in the country. The importance of the housing sector in cement demand can be gauged from the fact that it consumes almost 70%-80% of the country’s cement.

Get Rich Slowly answers the skeptics who ask: “Do the personal finance tools actually work?”

They work financially, but many of them also work psychologically. That last bit may be the most important. I frequently say that money is “more about mind than it is about math”, and I mean it. We all know the basic arithmetic behind money management — it’s the psychological stuff that gets in our way. Read the full post.