Will Accenture and IBM pick up Satyam's slack?

Satyam Computer Services (NYSE: SAY) stock has not opened for U.S. trading in days -- and if it did it would be down 91%. As I posted, its CEO announced that Satyam's financial statements were fraudulent and that means that its clients and 53,000 employees are up for grabs. In a world of shrinking budgets, Satyam's competitors ought to be eagerly feeding on the flesh of this crippled company.

Which competitors are likely to pick up the slack? Both Accenture (NYSE: ACN) and and International Business Machines (NYSE: IBM) are best positioned to feed on Satyam's corpse. And with the $50 billion a year market for offshoring experienced a growth slowdown from 29% in 2008 to 10% in 2009 -- those Satyam clients could help plug the growth gap,

There are three reasons why Accenture and IBM should gain:

• They each already supply most of Satyam's blue-chip corporate clients;
• They each have built up their Indian operations in recent years, so they offer Satyam customers the same skills at competitive prices; and
• They are not Indian companies and therefore are not under the same corporate governance cloud that Satyam's revelations spread to all of India's outsourcers.

It may not be too late to invest in Accenture -- which is much more focused on consulting -- to take advantage of this possibility. In the case of IBM, the pickings from Satyam may not be big enough to move its stock.

Peter Cohan is president of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College. His eighth book is You Can't Order Change: Lessons from Jim McNerney's Turnaround at Boeing. He has no financial interest in the securities mentioned.