Letters. Ricoh rot

This refers to “Trouble at Ricoh: a lot like Satyam” by Aarti Krishnan (Circuit Breaker, February 16). The spectre of corporate governance failure continues to haunt India Inc.Despite a permissible threshold at 26 per cent (above 25 per cent) with retail investors, the listed company has jeopardised investor confidence in the capital market. The author has nailed the point that the Satyam episode took a decade to bring the corrupt to books, but in Ricoh’s case it took only around two years. That’s good improvement. Still, the management has not learned their lesson. We need stricter regulations for such enterprises.

Email

It is a sorry state that one or the other scam in the financial sector keeps hitting the Indian economy. In PNB’s case, lapses rest squarely with the bank, where if an annual review of non-fund based limits had been done, the damage would have been very minimal, especially considering the fact that the irregular transactions have been going on for 6-7 years. Non-fund based facilities such as the age-old Bank Guarantee and Letter of Credit and the new Letter of Comfort or Letter of Undertaking are a potential bomb, though they are not a fund-based facility as such and do not form part of regular and routine core banking solutions. These limits are subject to at least annual review, if not at a higher frequency.Appraisal of huge exposures of all kinds should be strictly enforced.

Bengaluru

The fraud at PNB perpetrated by diamantaire Nirav Modi in collusion with some of its staffers gave the country no break in scams. The simple fact underlined by the mother of all bank scams is that public sector banks remain easily penetrable for rapacious business magnates to siphon off crores and crores of rupees. Grasping billionaires go on defrauding banks and defaulting on loans; on its part, the government goes on infusing more cash into banks and waiving corporate loans. We don’t know what to make of allowing the fraudsters to flee the country and cock a snook at the people and then revoking the passport and issuing look-out notices against them.

Maruthancode, Tamil Nadu

Systemic weaknesses in PSU banks is getting exposed too frequently. Banking needs informed discretion and application of independent judgement in lending. This would call for integrity, both in the system and from managers. Even a pedigreed CEO can not be expected to single handedly counter the shortfalls in a strait jacketed system that makes up the entire public sector banking. Changes in the regulatory framework, rising customer expectations, shift in the employee demography and changes in technology have emerged as key drivers for the PSU Banks which must gear up to meet demands from expanding economy, optimise resources, increase their presence across the value chain, renew focus on R&D and innovation, create a better performance culture and service customer demands effectively

Navi Mumbai

If the Government knew about the PNB scam in July 2017 itself, as was reported by media, why the authorities did not take steps to prevent the culprit from going out of the country? Not only in the name of recapitalisation of banks public money is being wasted, tax payers money getting frittered away through such scams makes one stand up and think what sort of governance structure exists.

Chennai

The building tragedy at Kasavanahalli in Bangalore which snuffed out the lives of three people was a disaster waiting to happen. The death toll could have been far worse if it had been more occupied. The use of sub-standard material and a weak foundation made worse by stagnant water, led to the mishap. The owner and contractor made a grave error in judgement while going for the construction of four more floors on the shaky structure.

Bengaluru