Ratan Tata’s Tata Group is the most trustworthy business house in India.This was found in a poll conducted among domestic investors. The trustworthiness is for financial reporting. I don’t have anything else to say except for this - well done Tata.

This survey is in line with the previous survey conducted by Mint. Only difference is the Tata group companies were listed separately. In this case they were clubbed together which I think is a better thing. Because, in the group companies the DNA is already set. There won’t be much of a difference between Tata Chemicals and TCS in the way they operate.

10 Most trustworthy companies in India :

1. Tata group
2. Infosys
3. HDFC Group
4. L&T
5. Aditya Birla Group
6. Bharti Airtel
7. Sundaram/TVS Group
8. ICICI Bank
9. Mukesh Ambani Group
10. Anil Ambani group

Infosys is the lone IT company ( I have a thing for IT) in the list. Not only that it is up against some big conglomerates. Credit should be given to Infosys and its brand name. Credit should also be given to Infosys for the way they managed it. The peaceful transition of power in the management so far and keeping family members out of the daily running of business are not something we see very often.

Now, comes the tough part. I can’t resist this. I usually stay away from it but, take a dig at it once in a while. Yes, you guessed it right. It is the Reliance group. Reliance Industries is the most valuable Indian company and yet it is at number 9 as far as trust goes.

Is it like, we don’t trust you that much but we will continue investing in whichever new company you might open up only to be gobbled up later? Or is it that we don’t trust you that much but you are an oil baron and we don’t have many options?

Any which way, we have some serious problem. May be I am taking this survey too seriously but people have raised concerns once in a while about the way whole empire is run. Do you feel the same way too?

However, the poll found that many companies may have resorted to window dressing their accounts, but on a smaller scale, others were of the opinion that the financial statements presented were of quality and are not necessarily tainted because of Satyam fiasco. (source)

Did you see that? A new phrase, Window dressing their accounts. Satyam scam has not given one but two phrases so far. First one is the Hyderabadi discount and now window dressing. We will see more of these terms in 2009.

On a different note, from the first few days I felt that 2009 sucks. But, it is not bad after all. It’s 2 months now and we have seen some pretty interesting things. RIL took RPL to unlock shareholders value, Slumdog Millionaire got 8 Oscars and became UPA’s success story, two mega merger/acquisitions are taking place - one in air and one overseas and Tata Nano is just a few days away.