SKS Microfinance

SKS Microfinance is in the news today. A minority shareholder holding a few shares has gone to court and obtained a stay on the summary sacking of its CEO Suresh Gurumani. So, looks like the issue may drag on now. I am neither a shareholder in SKS nor do I plan to become one (surely not now!). But the episode interests me. It is one more example, as if any was needed, of how company promoters pay lip service to Corporate Governance. Small shareholders are held in utter contempt, and have no rights to any information whatsoever, even in companies that they put in their hard earned money (at much higher prices than the promoters do). You can sack a CEO and not bother to explain why he was sacked! Just say that it was done in the interest of the company - what a joke this country has become! Company boards too continue to be rubber stamps - nothing meaningful has come out of the Satyam Saga, where this issue was discussed and debated so intensely. Ironically, SKS has the God of Corporate Governance in India, N.R. Narayana Murthy as one of its investors. I wonder what he must be thinking now.