Hyderabad: Mahindra Satyam will go for a "tightening" on salary hikes this year as business environment is cautious. "Salary hike is still under discussion. There will be well tightening (in salary hikes). That much I can tell. All I can say is as CEO, I will take pay cut if required," company CEO C P Gurnani said. "My engineers, my managers and Directors of Board clearly understand that it is little bit of a cautious climate and within this cautious climate it is better to work together and work more as a team instead of trying to be bit extravagant. The mood is not extravagant and mood would be cautious," he added. Last year, MSat which has an employee base of 33,000 offered 8 to 12 percent salary hikes from October. Sources said that this year pay hikes will be less than 10 percent and by next month the company may announce its decision. Guranai said employee appraisals are currently going on and the amount of hike has not yet been decided. Replying to a query, he said as the economies of the U.S. and Europe are not encouraging there may be some stressful days ahead. "I think most of us are very cautious. Most of us are reviewing it (situation) on day to day basis. Most of us are not going to be adventurous or will be risk takers at this time. Whatever we do, we do with a fair amount of caution. Eventually, it will restrict the IT spending (of governments or companies)," he explained. On the Tech Mahindra-Mahindra Satyam merger issue, he said there are 13 task forces with members from both the companies currently working for the integration of HR policies. He, however, agreed that there could be some differences that could be sorted out. "There is joint committee there are 12 or 13 task forces which are working on the integration challenges and those 13 task forces will make the recommendations to branding which includes levels designations and various policy measures in the company after merger," he said. He said that as both the organisations started working together on many projects, integration among employees may not be a problem. The combined entity is expected to have an employee base of around 75,000.