Olympus Admits It Hid Losses For Decades
November 8th, 2011Via: Reuters:
Japan’s Olympus admitted on Tuesday it hid losses on securities investments dating back to the 1980s, bowing to weeks of pressure to explain a series of baffling transactions that have put the future of the firm in doubt.
The revelations by the 92-year-old maker of endoscopes and cameras appear to vindicate ex-CEO Michael Woodford, who has staged a campaign since being sacked on October 14 to force the firm to come clean on nearly $1.5 billion in questionable payments.
Olympus President Shuichi Takayama blamed Tsuyoshi Kikukawa, who quit as president and chairman on October 26, Vice-President Hisashi Mori and internal auditor Hideo Yamada for the cover-up, saying he would consider criminal complaints against them.
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The Olympus affair — initially given little attention by most domestic media — is the biggest corporate scandal to hit Japan since a series of scandals at brokerages in the 1990s including one that led to the demise in 1997 of Yamaichi Securities, then the country’s fourth largest brokerage.
“It’s big. Olympus was supposed to be a paragon of corporate society,” said Darrel Whitten, managing director at Investor Networks Inc, an investor relations consultancy.
