Maytas Properties may go to strategic investor: Khurshid

Corporate Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid today said the government is looking at the possibilities of inducting a strategic buyer for Maytas Properties, the company promoted by the kins of disgraced Satyam founder B Ramalinga Raju.

"For all practical reasoning, obviously that (strategic sale) is something that would work out... But they (board members) have to decide," Khurshid said when asked whether efforts were on to find a strategic buyer for the troubled company.

"Ved Jain (Chairman of Maytas Properties) is working out all permutation and combinations, and we are trying to give him all help required... We have very limited option since we have started the process we want to bring it to a satisfactory end," the Minister said.

Following the admission of accounting fraud in Satyam Computer Services by Raju last year, the government appointed its own nominees on the twin companies — Maytas Infra and Maytas Properties — promoted by Raju's sons.

Ved Jain, the then President of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India, was appointed Chairman of the company in March 2009 and was give the task to rehabilitate Maytas Properties, a company with interest in real estate in and around Hyderabad.

Several Non-Resident Indians who booked flats in projects promoted by Maytas Properties have been asking the government to expedite rehabilitation of the company.

The company had raised Rs 650 crore from customers for the Rs 1,100-crore Hill County project near Hyderabad. Maytas Properties reportedly has a land bank of about 6,000 acres.

Maytas Properties and Maytas Infra were the two companies which Satyam had tried to purchase in December 2008 but the deal was aborted following objections by shareholders.