State Wedding

State Wedding
Roshni Nadar, newly appointed CEO of HCL Corp. and Shiv Nadar’s daughter, is getting hitched at the end of the month. The betrothed is a chap called Shikhar Malhotra who’s a distributor for Honda. We hear she’s known him for around 10 years, and the relationship has survived the long years apart when she was making her bones with CNBC, CNN and Sky. Here’s the funny bit though.

The ceremonies won’t be at any five-star hotel or exclusive resort. Nope, they’re going to be in rather more exotic surroundings: A ministerial bungalow in Lutyen’s Delhi currently occupied by Kamal Nath, Minister of Road Transport and Highways. The story goes that he and Shiv Nadar became good buddies during his (Nath’s) previous appointment as commerce minister. With ministerji’s passion for wall-to-wall carpeting and crystal chandeliers, we’re sure the event will be both plush and glittery.

Galleon to the rescue!
McKinsey prides itself on its strong relationships with the C-Suite. As a result, unlike a lot of other consultants, they tend to get hired by the promoter, not the operational heads, and make themselves thoroughly unpopular with labour class — CEOs downwards — by digging up all the dirt and carrying it back to Daddy. Well, a rival management consultant had been glumly watching a McKinsey director, a certain Anil Kumar, cosy up to the promoter at one of his long-standing clients and was pretty sure he’d soon be losing that retainer. Said company’s CEO wasn’t over-fond of The Firm either. But just after October 16th, both gents were seen wearing beatific smiles. Nope, it wasn’t schadenfreude about Raj Rajaratnam’s plight. But the McKinsey director in the list of the accused was... yep, you guessed it. All was well with their world.

Satyam in Jeopardy
No, we’re not stating the obvious. Let us explain. A quiz addict friend in the US tells us that in a recent Jeopardy show, there was a question in a category called ‘World Headquarters.’ (The format of the show is that you get the answer, and you have to reply with the question.) Well, the clue-answer was ‘Mahindra Satyam Computers.’ And the correct question was ‘What is India?’ It is entirely untrue that our External Affairs ministry immediately asked Narayan Murthy and Azim Premji to send out corporate brochures to the show’s staff.