Picture perfect?

Olympus corporation has been in business for almost a century. They’ve made countless products which range from cameras to medical devices.

This giant of a company recently came into the open with a confession which shocked the business community and it’s shareholders at large. On 8 November 2011, the company admitted that they had committed serious money laundering and tax evasion to cover losses on investments dating to the 1990s. This was termed as the “biggest and the longest running loss hiding arrangements in japanese history” according to the Wall Street Journal. The company laid the blame of the unethical and inappropriate accounting on ex-president Tsuyoshi Kikukawa, auditor Hideo Yamada and executive VP Hisashi Mori. This unethical accounting malpractice only came into light when the new foreign President Michael Woodford started digging into old acquisitions made by Olympus from 2006-2009. All of them involved the Cayman Islands, tax evasion, dissolving accounts shortly after the transactions were made and in the final case, huge amounts of ‘transaction fee’ to two middle men was also uncovered.

Woodford’s revelations made Olympus’ stocks plummet by 50% and shareholders weren’t too happy with the cover-up of secret losses which lasted for about a decade.

Picture perfect for Olympus? I think not.

References: – http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2098115,00.html

–http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/08/business/olympus-hid-investing-losses-in-big-merger-payouts.html

–http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympus_Cameras