Mumbai, Jan. 12: Satyam had a fairly long history of quirky cash management — and no one appeared to have noticed till it was too late.

Kawaljeet Saluja of Kotak Securities had raised the first red flag at an analysts’ meet with the Satyam management after the company presented the second quarter results. The Kotak analyst expressed surprise that the company had parked a substantial sum in its current accounts for at least four quarters. Saluja was quickly fobbed off by the then Satyam team which said the money would soon be moved to deposit accounts.

But it now appears that the company had been following such a deviant practice for years. During the year ended March 31, 2006, the company held Rs 1,021.28 crore in current accounts – a surge of 156.8 per cent over the previous year. The company inexplicably chose to park in current accounts over 53 per cent of the amount that it held in interest-earning deposits accounts.

One reason for this was that it wanted to stay liquid to meet some exigencies but it wasn’t clear what these were.

Current account deposits started to swell again during the year ended March 31, 2008; it touched Rs 956.29 crore, just a tad short of the amount in 2006. But the sum in the current account had moderated to 28.8 per cent of the money parked in deposit accounts.

But the bigger question remains unanswered: Why would a company that earned Rs 8,300 crore in overall revenues park more than 11 per cent in non-interest bearing current accounts? In contrast, Infosys had just Rs 243 crore in current accounts and Rs 5,772 crore in deposit accounts – a ratio of just 4.2 per cent.