Former Chairman Tsuyoshi Kikukawa and six more people have been arrested in Japan. You can read more about that story at Bloomberg (Click here).
I have not a lot to say, it’s a quite long and complicated story. The real important news will arrive at the emergency shareholder meeting on April 20 at which investors will vote on a new management. And soon we will also know who will become the new partner from Olympus. Sony, Samsung, Fuji or Panasonic are particularly interested in the medical business from Olympus. Effects on the camera business will probably be very marginal.
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23 Responses
I like the old days when the disgraced would do honor suicide
Well…it is nice to see that in Japan people who lie and steal on a grand scale can be arrested and at least prosecuted for their crimes even though they wear white collars. Unfortunately, in the United States these same people are not even investigated and instead are REWARDED with huge sums of cash and new opportunities to do the same crimes, AGAIN.
Hopefully, if the exchairman and the managers are proven in court to have lied, and stolen from others, they might actually suffer an appropriate punishment for their crimes. Ideally a punishment that would be given to a person who robs a bank…or steals 10,000 cars perhaps….
One can only hope there is some justice somewhere.
“Steal a little and they throw you in jail
Steal a lot and they make you king”
Saw a story some 10-15 years ago about a black man from North Carolina (?) who served some 20 years for stealing a color TV ca 1970…
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor from sleeping under bridges, begging in the streets, and stealing bread. — Anatole France
Good to see these guys at least doing a perp walk. It will be interesting to see what happens next.
‘If I owe the bank £100 and cannot pay, then I am lost. If I owe the bank £1 billion and cannot pay, then the bank is lost’ As has happened………..
hear hear!
A company that can hide such losses over many years must have very positive revenue. Losses that are hidden from shareholders must have been there as revenue and not recorded, that is the only way to hide loss for such an extended period.
Olympus must be a very profitable company and as such does not need a partner.
Yes of course, is the not certainly Olympus need economic help rather also.
No worry, Terada will endbehind the bars soon.
Did they have any OMD-EM5s on them???
Let’s hope they’re returned to the sales stream.
I’m pretty sure they will find the filthy trail to those overpowered accountancy bureaus, which are as bad as Goldman Sucks…
They are victims of US hedge funds and Goldman.
They are mainly victims of incompetent leaders some 20 years ago who did catastrophic investments in properties, a business totally outside of Olympus’ core business.
Oh yes, as usual it is all the U.S.’s fault, I see. Real original thinking there! Of COURSE the U.S. played a lot of big, dumb, and often very shady hands in this allocation of cream for the wealthy, the leadership and oligarchy that is, but they are not unique in this sense, nor are Goldman Sachs that unique in their shady doings, but then some people will always find a solitary victim in every mess, for it is just more convenient and fits in with some people’s narrow-minded and pre-conceived views. How about we go after ALL of the perpetrators, and not just find one or two handy whipping boys at the expense of everyone else’s blame in this mess (Including our own blame! Look in the mirror if u think u r somehow so innocent and clean-handed in this. If u lived and took part in the developed world at all, then u too played a part, make no mistake.)
“Effects on the camera business will probably be very marginal”
Maybe, but maybe not. Considering that those companies are interested in the profitable endoscope business and not in the loss-making camera branch, and that they have their own strategy in this field (except Panasonic), they could decide to let it die slowly, especially in the case of Sony and Fuji
The deal is not for a controlling interest in Olympus, so I don’t see the camera business being affected much, if at all, especially if the excitement around the announcement of the E-M5 translates into sales.
I hope they weren’t working on m43 PDAF because we still need it.
The chairman and his fraudulent posse were most certainly not working on anything related to engineering. They were busy taking care of important financial matters. 😉
Points:
1) “Arrested” is not the same as “convicted.”
2) They’re all elderly, upper-class gentlemen, so I’ll bet none of them is sitting in a jail cell right now wearing an orange jumpsuit.
3) M43 PDAF ain’t happening, no matter who gets arrested.
1) Conviction rate of people arrested in Japan is very high. They do not arrest unless they can convict. “99.7% of all the cases brought to court resulted in conviction”
2) There are no country club jails in Japan. Even for minor criminals jail time is very difficult.
Hope Sony won’t buy it. Sony makes great sensors, but it’s a very evil company, from installing virus in your computer when you bought their music, to remove features in their products after you’ve paid, to finally sue their own customers and more. Hope it’ll be panasonic, which happily let hackers tinkers with their cameras (Sony would not ever ever allow the GH hack, Sony would have screamed and kicked to dead, remotely bricked cameras and who knows what else).
Bonus point if Panasonic implements Olympus JPEG engine and Olympus IBIS into all the Panasonic cameras. It would be super cool if they’ll offer “mixed” kits such as an Olympus E-P4 with the Panny 20mm and Panasonic GF4 and GX2 with the Olympus collapsable zoom: Panasonic zooms are either too large (14-45 and 14-42), or too crappy (14-42 and 14-42X – see http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/PanasonicDMCGX1/page16.asp#lens if you don’t know what I’m talking about), or both (14-42).
Agree with your opinion of Sony business practices. Historically, they’ve continually acted against the very customers that purchase their products using heavy-handed tactics disguised as copyright protection. I have 3 products that ive purchased from Sony that have become virtually obsolete because of the way that they restrict features that might put their copyrighted materials at risk.
If I were one of them I would hide in one of the OM-D humps and get shipped out of the country. Now we know why they made the hump.