To most international businessmen out here, the $1 billion Satyam scam, though shocking in its scale, will hardly be surprising.

At the very first corporate do I attended here, I met a recently arrived British managing director who was seriously unnerved, not so much that potential Indian partners admitted bribing politicians, but that several bragged about how many they had in their pockets.

Corruption is endemic in India, but the accounting and corporate governance regime has been one of the brighter spots. The role of “the promoter” in the Satyam affair makes me suspect it won't be alone, however.

Promoters — company founders like Satyam's Ramalingam Raju — sometimes have only a minority stake in their main listed company. But they wield effective control, often appointing relatives to key positions, and building dizzying networks of holding companies.

It's not too hard to siphon money out of one “promoter company” and into a more lucrative business, returning it six months later and pocketing the profits. Until last year, doing so would have been very rewarding.

Over the last six to 12 months, however, equities and property, popular ways to make a quick buck, have collapsed in value. So I wonder if there aren't other promoters pondering how to fill holes in their balance sheets.

* I spent Saturday night on a cow-dung floor in a farmer's hut. But even five hours in a rickety bus from Mumbai, the local rice growers and brickmakers were suffering from the global property hangover.

Until last summer, droves of speculators from the big city were buying up land at inflated prices. The newly enriched farmers and their agents built new houses. Hence the scores of small brick kilns that sprung up everywhere in the village in the last two years.

No prospective buyers have been seen in the surrounding villages for more than three months. So who will now buy the bricks?

* The British are stepping back in where some others still fear to tread. After a one-off meeting at the home of Deputy High Commissioner Vicky Treadwell, the monthly networking do for business Brits here has been held once again at the Trident-Oberoi, one of the two hotels occupied by terrorists on 26 November.