Satyam’s, New, CEO, Venkatesh, Roddam,, Vivek, Paul,, Jerry, Rao,, Raman, Roy?

Update : Satyam Board has selected A.S Murthy as the new CEO of the company on 5 FEB 2009.

Who will be the new CEO of Satyam? That happens to be on everybody’s mind. The board which is meeting today has to come up with a i-Banker and a new CEO and CFO for the company. Speculations are ripe with a set of names. Vivek Paul, Jerry Rao, Venkatesh Roddam, Raman Roy, Basab Pradhan and Phaneesh Murthy are the names which came up in my ‘research’.

At least 40 people are in the hunt for the Satyam’s CEO post. This is according to some ‘highly placed sources’. The news did not come out who the CEO would be but the names doing the rounds various circles are these:

1. Vivek Paul : Former Wipro executive has left Wipro to partner in a  buyout group of Texas Pacific Group. Vivek has left TPG and we are not sure what his future plans are. From whatever I could glean, he is not keen to return to India. Must be the Obama factor.
2. Venkatesh Roddam : This is a fairly new name that came up. Venkatesh is the former CEO of Satyam’s BPO Nipuna. He is on a break from corporate life right now and is living in Hyderabad. He neither agreed nor disagreed to the rumors but he is very excited about the rule. His association with Satyam in the past might get him the top job.
3. Jerry Rao : Jerry Rao made a career out of banking and after graduating from IIM-A. He was hit by the entrepreneurial bug in his early 40’s. Then he went ahead and built MPhasis. He later sold MPhasis to EDS and moved on.
4. Basab Pradhan : Ex-Infoscion is now heading Gridstone research. While at Infosys he was the head of Global Sales & Marketing. Like Jerry he is also an IIM-A graduate.
5. Raman Roy : Current CEO of Quattro BPO solutions. Raman started his career with TCS,  worked for GECIS,  started Spectramind in 2000. Sold Spectramind to Wipro and started Quatrro. Quatrro BPO also expressed interest in buying some parts of Satyam.
6. Phaneesh Murthy : Phaneesh is an ex-Infosys director and later went on to become the CEO of iGate. Murthy has expressed his interests of buying the company. This of course would happen if iGate acquires Satyam.

Venkatesh Roddam has an advantage over others as he knew Satyam well. The government was also looking for someone from the inside for the top seat.

What other names are doing the rounds?