Iam in the process of launching a weekly magazine. The dummy issue is printed and ready to be sent to potential advertisers and for feedback from likely readers. We in the office all agree that we couldn’t have chosen a more logical time to launch a media company, given the expected fall in GDP growth rates, the cuts in advertising spends, and all the strident breast-beating about the definitive end to all good times for all foreseeable future. So one of my colleagues had a suggestion on how to market our magazine. It was a powerful idea.

Get PricewaterhouseCoopers, he said, as our auditors. Get them to certify a circulation of 7,00,000 copies by the end of the first quarter, then get them to introduce us to all the advertisers who are PwC clients. This is a failsafe strategy. We are currently just working out what a good circulation would be: 5,00,000? 7,00,000? Would a number like a million be less credible than we would ideally want?

OK, lots of other people more knowledgeable than me have said it, but let me just add my $0.02, no different from the other commentators’ $5. What PwC has done is an utter disgrace. Maybe it was one senior partner of PwC who is responsible, and no one else knew. Yet, the firm must take responsibility for this criminal act ranging over seven years. I remember an editorial meeting at The Financial Express a year ago, with all of us wondering how Satyam’s quarterly results were so much better than those of TCS, Wipro and Infosys. It seemed to be the best-managed software company in India, and we wondered if we should do an in-depth analysis of what Satyam was doing so right. We didn’t, finally. The moment passed, thank God it did.

... contd.