Seven former officials and advisors to Olympus have been arrested for their alleged roles in the accounting fiasco at the company. See the Wall Street Journal article, Tokyo Makes Arrests in Olympus Scandal (article behind paywall).
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Arrests start from the Olympus accounting scandalRead More »
Arrests start from the Olympus accounting scandal Read More »
An investigative panel set up by Olympus released a report saying the external auditors couldn’t have found the fraud.
The panel also blamed five internal auditors for helping with the cover up. Olympus has sued the five.
An Internet search today indicates there are 270 articles discussing this. Here are a few you can browse:
One panel of investigators appointed by Olympus pointed fingers at the external auditors. I discussed this report in my guest post at re: The Auditors.
In contrast, this new panel isn’t pointing fingers at the external auditors. They are blaming the internal auditors for the costs incurred to investigate the cover up.
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Investigators for Olympus aren’t pointing fingers at KPMG and E&YRead More »
Investigators for Olympus aren’t pointing fingers at KPMG and E&Y Read More »
Yesterday I mentioned that Olympus was going after its former chairman and two others.
Today we found out who was sued.
A WSJ report indicates Olympus has sued 19 executives, including the current president and four current directors who are also senior executives over the fiasco of hiding a $1.7M loss.
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Olympus sues current board members and current presidentRead More »
Olympus sues current board members and current president Read More »
Olympus has sued its former chairman and two other individuals. According to the Wall Street Journal article, Olympus Sues Former Chairman (all articles behind a pay wall), when the company made announcement, they didn’t give details of the suit or even say exactly how people are being sued.
Most interesting tidbit in the article is the lawsuit was based upon an independent report from three lawyers regarding the role of the board in the scandal. That report will be released on January 10, according to the article.
Hint that there’s major, useful news on the horizon:
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Francine McKenna asked me to combine my short comments on the Olympus fraud into a guest post on her blog.
I’m quite happy to announce my revised, expanded, and edited discussion is available. You can read the full thing at How Do You Hide A Multibillion Dollar Loss? Accounting For The Olympus Fraud
Many thanks to Francine for the wonderful opportunity to speak to a big audience.
My guest post at re:The Auditors on accounting for the Olympus fraud Read More »
Olympus had a hard deadline of Wednesday to file its second quarter earnings report or face automatic delisting from the stock exchange. It met the deadline.
Along with the quarterly report, Olympus announced restated financial statements for the last five years.
Here are a few tidbits from today’s news reports of interest to us auditors.
Size of the fraud hasn’t change – currently at $1.58B.
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Olympus releases restated earnings- an auditor’s observationRead More »
Olympus releases restated earnings- an auditor’s observation Read More »
Previous posts discussed the outside report on the Olympus fraud. My wrapup comments:
Causes of the fraud
The report was harsh in identifying the causes. See the report, starting at page 23. Some that were mentioned: …
Summary of Olympus financial fraud – part 3 Read More »
Article in the Wall Street Journal on 12-7-11 gives more background on the methodology of the Olympus fraud: Panel Calls Olympus ‘Rotten’ at Core. (article behind paywall)
I made a few updates on my part 2 post. Have a few more comments in this post – things that are interesting to me.
Hiding losses was legal and normal
Apparently, moving underwater investments off the books was so common in Japan that it had a nickname, tobashi. …
Summary of Olympus financial fraud – part 2a Read More »
Previous post described the investigative report of the Olympus financial fraud.
Now a discussion of the debits and credits. Final post will discuss the underlying causes identify by the investigative committee and some of their recommendations.
Update 2 – When accounting rules changed in 2000, the report says Olympus management decided to move the investments off the books instead of taking the write down. Thus phase 1 was launched.
How do you hide a $1.7B loss?
This is what I was most curious about and what prompted me to read the report.
Here is a one paragraph summary from the report: …
Summary of Olympus financial fraud – part 2 Read More »
The investigative report on the Olympus fraud has been released. The fact pattern, causes, and recommendations are scathing.
This and my followup post are a thumbnail description. These are the result of just an hour or two of research. If you wish to expand the summary, point out errors, or clarify, feel free to do so. My guess is that readers of this blog won’t want as many details as I am providing, but do want to know more than just what shows up in the general news reports.
You can see one news article here: Olympus faces Tokyo delisting after management hid $1.7 billion of losses.
The Wall Street Journal has a good report, but it is behind a pay wall. WSJ also has a copy of the report, but I caution you on getting their copy. I was able to access the report once, but when I went back to it, accessing the report crashed my computer. Twice.
Update: Olympus has made the report available here.
The report’s conclusion compares management to a cancer:
Olympus had originally been a sound company, with diligent employees and high technical strength. Not all part (sic) of the company was involved in this misconduct. Olympus should remove its malignant tumor and literally renew itself. (Page 30)
What is the amount of the fraud and time frame?
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Summary of Olympus financial fraud – based on independent report – part 1Read More »
Summary of Olympus financial fraud – based on independent report – part 1 Read More »
I’m slightly curious how Olympus hid losses of one or two billion $US, but not curious enough to do my own research. Also curious how three different Big 4 firms missed it.
Thus I will rely on other bloggers, such as Tracy Coenen’s post, Financial Statement Fraud: Olympus Makes It Look Easy, at her blog, the Fraud Files.
One of the several components they used to make losses go away is paying a lot of money to buy companies that have no history, earnings, or assets: …
Fog around structure of Olympus fraud starting to liftRead More »
Fog around structure of Olympus fraud starting to lift Read More »
Yeah, Olympus. The people who made that cool camera you’ve been using.
Here’s the story in one sentence: It looks like Olympus has been materially cooking the books since the late 1990s.
In one paragraph:
The maker of cameras and medical-imaging equipment said Tuesday that it used four acquisitions in 2008 to “clear up” paper losses on investments dating to the 1990s. Asahi and KPMG AZSA signed off on Olympus’s statements for those years. There’s no indication that the accounting firm signed statements that it knew were misleading or incorrect.
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Time to start paying attention to the Olympus accounting fiascoRead More »
Time to start paying attention to the Olympus accounting fiasco Read More »