Japan's Financial Services Agency (FSA) which overseas the country's markets, has recommended to fine Olympus nearly 200 million yen (about $2.5 million) for engaging in illegal accounting practices. The scandal is the biggest in Japan's corporate history. The company and six executives were criminally charged in March in the $1.7 billion fraud.
As promised, Olympus has begun shipping its first OM-D camera in the US and other markets. The E-M5, a mirrorless camera that takes advantage of the Micro Four Thirds interchangeable lens system, initially arrived late last month, however the first run was limited to Japan.
Lensbaby has begun shipping its Composer Pro special effects attachment for mirrorless, interchangeable lens cameras. With it, a photographer can reproduce tilt-shift or another specific effect without having to turn to a full DSLR. The Composer Pro works with Panasonic and Olympus Micro Four Thirds cameras, Sony's NEX line, and Samsung NX cameras.
An independent panel has determined that Ernst & Young was not accountable for any misrepresentation or legal lapses in how the firm audited Olympus's books in the face of the digital imaging company's $1.7 billion financial scandal. The panel had been commissioned by the accounting firm in December to take an independent look at how the accounting firm oversaw Olympus's financial reporting practices over several years while Olympus's executives were allegedly engaged in financial misconduct. A separate panel commissioned by Olympus had also cleared Ernst & Young, as well as KPMG, which had been the company's accountant until 2009.
Olympus has confirmed that it will ship its new Micro Four Thirds OM-D camera beginning March 31 in Japan. The OM-D E-M5 will be available in US markets beginning April 10 and is available for preorder now. The E-M5 is the first in Olympus' OM-D line. The E-M5 is a a mirrorless interchangeable lens camera that borrows its retro style from the classic OM-4 film camera.
At its meeting on Monday, the entire board of directors at Olympus has resigned. As its last act, the the board named Hiroyuki Sasa, 56, as its next president. Former Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. executive Yasuyuki Kimoto, 63, was also selected to be the new board chairman. The appointments will require shareholder approval at a special meeting scheduled for April 20.
Scandal ravaged Olympus will appoint an insider, Hiroyuki Sasa, as its next president. The appointment, reported by Nikkei [sub. required], will be effective April 20, and comes in the wake of the resignation of its former president, Shuichi Takayama, who took responsibility for the company's $1.7 billion accounting fraud and subsequent cover-up. Earlier this month, seven former Olympus executives and their investment advisers were arrested for violations related to the fraud.
A new patent application found online on Monday has lent strong support to the belief Canon is working on a mirrorless, interchangeable lens camera. The patent is for an 18-45mm f3.5-5.6 kit lens explicitly meant for APS-C mirrorless cameras. Allowing for the crop factor, the lens is equivalent to 29-70mm if it were full-frame.
Former Olympus President Tsuyoshi Kikukawa, former Executive Vice President Hisashi Mori and former auditor Hideo Yamada have been arrested in the wake of the company’s massive $1.7 billion accounting fraud scandal. Reuters reports that Japanese authorities arrested the trio on the grounds that they may have violated Japan’s Financial Instruments and Exchange Law. Officials also took former bankers Akio Nakagawa and Nobumasa Yokoo into custody, and two others for their role in the cover-up.
When its fiscal year ends in March, Japanese camera maker Olympus is expected to post a 32 billion yen net loss (about $412 million), BusinessWeek reported on Monday. This is worse than analysts expected and largely due to writing off equipment in the Thailand factory floods that affected camera and hard drive makers alike. Company president Shuichi Takayama said Olympus may want to find a partner in order to boost capital.
Samsung's Super Bowl ad for the Galaxy Note may have been one of the costliest mistakes in advertising in recent memory, based on new Nielsen data from the event. The Android phone's commercial appeared neither in the top 10 most-remembered ads of the football game nor the top 10 most-liked among Nielsen's nearly 12,000-person panel. Instead, the only technology picks went to E*Trade and to GoDaddy, whose flip-flop on SOPA still left it with the ninth most memorable spot.
Olympus brought out two specialized point-and-shoot cameras ahead of the CP+ show. Leading off is the SZ-31MR, one of the longest-ranged compact ultrazoom cameras with a 24X (25-600mm equivalent) lens. The camera makes up for the blur likely at the far end of its zoom both by using a 16-megapixel, backside-illuminated CMOS sensor and two previous-generation TruePic V chips that give it better low-light performance on top of improving camera speed and image processing.
Olympus ended rumors Tuesday by trotting out its highest-end Micro Four Thirds camera to date. The OM-D is consciously styled after the classic OM-4 film camera but, in place of the mirrors and optical viewfinder, has a 1.44-megapixel electronic viewfinder instead. It's billed as one of the few mirrorless interchangeable lens cameras to have its EVF in a more natural position above the lens, rather than at the corner on a camera such as the Sony NEX-7.
Today's deals from DealNN include discounted cameras, printers, and more. Ecost.com has recently lowered the price of the refurbished Olympus 14MP Digital Camera, complete with 3-inch LCD display, 5x optical zoom, 4x digital zoom, HD movie mode, and SD/SDHC memory card slot. Currently featured at DealNN, this camera has now dropped to $69.99 in price and offers savings of up to $110.
Ex-Olympus CEO turned whistleblower Michael Woodford expects that official investigations into the massive $1.7 billion financial scandal will yield further damaging revelations, reports Reuters. Although Olympus tooks steps to have a third-party investigate the 13-year investment losses long cover-up, Woodford expects that Japanese, British and US law enforcement agencies will dig up more dirt ahead of an extraordinary shareholding meeting scheduled for April 20. The news comes at a time when Olympus may be set to enter into a new alliance with Panasonic and Samsung.
The Olympus OM-D had some of its details spoiled after Amazon Japan (cached) briefly posted a product page with photos. True to form, the Micro Four Thirds camera will be a tribute to the OM-4 with the retro look and tall box above the lens. Instead of a mirror system, though, this space would have the rumored 1.44-megapixel electronic viewfinder, putting it in a more natural position than the corner position on other mirrorless digital cameras.
Apple on Wednesday afternoon posted Mac OS X 10.7.3 (release notes). The Lion upgrade adds several languages, including Catalan for Spaniards as well as Croatian, Greek, Hebrew, Romanian, Slovak, Thai, and Ukrainian. RAW photo compatibility has expanded to several new cameras, including the Nikon J1 and V1, Olympus' current PEN cameras, and current Sony Alpha and NEX cameras, such as the NEX-5N.
Both Panasonic and Samsung are reportedly engaged in talks that may lead to a financial partnership with Olympus. Details posted in the Mainichi newspaper corroborate earlier leaks surrounding a potential deal with Samsung, while also pointing to separate negotiations with Panasonic and another Japanese company.
CEO of camera and lens maker Sigma, sadly, has passed away. The 78-year-old Michihiro Yamaki succumbed in Tokyo, Japan on January 18 after a fight with liver cancer. Yamaki founded the company in 1961 and was heading up the company up to 2011, on its 50th anniversary.
Two Japanese camera lens manufacturers have signed onto the Micro Four Thirds standard pioneered by Olympus and Panasonic. They include Kenko Tokina and Tamron, while a third Japanese company, Astrodesign, has also jumped onboard, though it makes video measuring equipment and not lenses. This should give those how have bought into the new type of camera, which allows for interchangeable lenses on digital camera bodies that are smaller than DSLRs, more options for lenses.
Olympus and Sony are nearly ready to make a large-scale pact, Japanese business periodical Diamond Weekly reported. No specifics were known, but Olympus was believed to be hosting a news conference later this week that should have some details. The unofficial source also said the alliance would be voted on by a dedicated shareholder's meeting in April.
Olympus on Friday narrowly avoided additional threats of possible delisting from the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Officials at the trading house said they would let Olympus stay after the $1.7 billion concealment scandal but would make it pay a relatively mild fine of 10 million yen, or about $129,800. The light penalty was based on the belief that just a handful of staffers had been responsible for hiding Olympus' losses and that the core of the company was safe.
The upcoming Olympus OM-D camera, due for an official unveiling on February 8, has now been seen, at least partially. 43Rumors shared a leaked image of some of the top of the camera, which will be the first digital shooter from Olympus' flagship OM series that dates back 40 years. The Micro Four Thirds camera appears to have a high-quality metal body.
Olympus is likely to unveil a new compact digital camera with a product called the OM-D, which was trademarked on January 3. While the camera hasn't officially been revealed, Olympus did tease its "latest Olympus masterpiece" is coming in a teaser ad. It is expected to be a modern, digital camera styled after the film OM-1 of the past and the more recent OM-2000.
Olympus has announced that it has sued five past and current auditors seeking $13 million in damages, according to Reuters. The company is suing the firms after each had signed off on 13 years of fraudulent accounts. Senior Olympus officials, now mostly no longer with the company, had fabricated the company’s accounts over the same period to cover $1.7 billion of losses. Although cleared of responsibility for the fraud by an independent panel, KPMG and Ernst & Young, and other auditors remain under official review.
A new report has surfaced suggesting that Samsung may have its sights set on getting a slice of the scandal plagued Olympus. Olympus is currently picking up the pieces following one of the biggest corporate scandals to rock Japan after it was found to have concealed around $1.7 billion in losses through dodgy accounting practices. According to Reuters , Samsung is interested in investing in Olympus’s medical imaging arm with the company short of capital following revelations of its accounting fraud.
An independent panel investigating Olympus might issue much harsher recommendations than its early investigation. The Kyodo News Agency had heard that the panel would advise the company suing over 10 existing and former executives for a total equivalent to $1.2 billion for hiding losses for 13 years. The move might also see current president Shuichi Takayama, who had only take over from the disgraced Tsuyoshi Kikukawa in October, resign by the end of January.
Ousted Olympus CEO Michael Woodford fild suit against his former employer for allegedly firing him unfairly. He contended in a presentation that there were "no grounds whatsoever" for his being let go and that the real reason was to cover up the $1.7 billion scandal of deliberately hidden finances. He took the route after being rebuffed in attempts to have large-scale investors ask for a change in the board.
Wells Fargo has leaked virtually every camera designer's plans for CES and PMA next week but has provided unusually large amounts of detail for major Canon releases. The PowerShot G1X is Canon's long-awaited if indirect response to mirrorless rivals and carries a large, 1.5-inch, 14.3-megapixel CMOS sensor to let it take in more light and detail than most compacts. Although the 4X, 28-112mm equivalent lens is still non-removable, it now has a wider maximum aperture of f2.5 (better than f2.8) to improve low light and soften backgrounds.
A new rumor originating from 43rumors maintains that Olympus will release a new weather-resistant Four Thirds camera with an integrated viewfinder next month. Next week's CES will be skipped altogether and the camera will instead be revealed between February 6 and 11. That same week is also supposed to mark the reveal of a new Fujifilm camera system with a recently patented integrated viewfinder and an organic sensor.
Police, regulators, and prosecutors raided Olympus' headquarters and the homes of key executives on Wednesday local time following an independent panel's determination that it had hid $1.7 billion in its 20-year-old accounting scandal. The Tokyo area raids, which included former chairman Tsuyoshi Kikukawa's home, were part of an unusual joint investigation. Their actions were part of an official look that could result in formal charges if the accounting shuffles had enough of an impact to make the company liable.
Olympus has successfully met the December 14 deadline of filing financial results and relisting the last five years of earnings. The company earlier delayed these numbers after admitting to covering up losses. It had been cleared of immediate criminal claims but risked being delisted from the Tokyo Stock Exchange. While exonerated from claims of a yakuza link, Olympys was found o have hid nearly $1.7 billion through advisor fees and takeovers.
The full text of an independent report (PDF) finding that Olympus hid $1.7 billion dollars has blamed not just the company but outside auditors and banks. While focused on VP Hisashi Mori and internal auditor Hideo Yamada, it also blamed external auditors Ernst & Young ShinNihon and KPMG AZSA for seeing Olympus try to mask losses but doing nothing to stop it. The root was still senior leadership at the camera maker, however, which was not corrupt but showed an endemic problem in Japan with companies where loyalty is more important than ethics, even if staff underneath are honest.
Olympus won't face as grave a consequence as suspected, an investigative panel slipped out early Monday. The Reuters contact explained that the the independent team found executives had covered up about $1.67 billion, or considerably less than the possible $4.9 billion rumored earlier. Checks had also ruled out a connection to the yakuza.
Japanese camera and endoscope giant Olympus has only two weeks left to report its actual financial results for the past five years, according to Reuters. After being sensationally exposed by the company’s ex-CEO Michael Woodford, who uncovered that the company had been cooking its books, Olympus must meet the deadline or face being automatically deregistered. The accounting malpractice at the company, to cover securities losses, extends back to the 1990s.
Ex-CEO of the scandal rocked Olympus, Michael Woodford, has announced that he has quit his position as a board member in order orchestrate a wholesale leadership change. Woodford has told Reuters that he does not want such a move to be aggressive, but driven by the shareholders. To this extent, he has called on the current board to initiate a shareholder meeting by at least February in order to put his plan to a vote.
Olympus is reportedly considering a number of significant restructuring strategies, which may bring the company to find a buyer for its consumer camera division. The Japanese company is currently reviewing its business structure in an attempt to survive an accounting scandal that is believed to involve as much as $4.9 billion in hidden losses.
Olympus saw an upheaval in its corporate structure Thursday after three board members quit in the wake of its ongoing loss cover-up scandal. Chairman Tsuyoshi Kikukawa, who fired the CEO after he uncovered the mismanagement, resigned in sync with auditor Hideo Yamada and Executive Vice President Hisashi Mori. They quit just a day before they were to confront ousted CEO Michael Woodford at a board meeting.
Japanese lawmakers and other officials are concerned the financial scandal at Olympus could be tied to the yakuza. A newly discovered memo acquired by the New York Times from Japan's Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission, the Tokyo prosecutor's office, and the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department shows that some $4.9 billion is unaccounted for, or much more than previously believed. Even the FBI is investigating the company after astronomical fees were paid to companies that have alleged links to organized crime.
The once proud Japanese camera and medical equipment maker Olympus is readying to take legal action against its own executives. Any executive found to have been complicit in its multi-million dollar accounting scandal will be hit with legal action as well as possible criminal complaints, according to Reuters. The company has been reeling since admitting that it used advisory fees to cover up investment losses made in the 1990s to avoid reporting them in its financial results.
Apple has posted a new Digital Camera RAW Compatibility Update, v3.9. The patch extends support for different RAW formats within Aperture 3 and iPhoto '11. Newly supported camera lines include Nikon's 1 J1, 1 V1, and CoolPix P7100, as well as Sony's NEX-5N, Alpha SLT-A65, and Alpha SLT-A77, and Olympus' PEN E-PL1s, PEN E-PL3, and PEN E-PM1.
Olympus in the wake of an independent investigation confirmed late Monday that it had been engaging in questionable, if not illegal, activity surrounding its advisor fee scandal. It said investment losses made in the 1990s had been covered up by paying a supposed advisor $687 million during the buyout of Gyrus, masking the difference. It had also spent $940.1 million to buy a trio of Japanese companies between 2006 and 2008 but had promptly written off $700 million of that value.
In 2009, Olympus announced that it had replaced its auditor, KPMG with another global acccounting firm, Ernst & Young. Reuters now reports that the camera and imaging equipment manufacturer failed to tell investors that the reason behind the firing was a disagreement over how to handle a questionable $687 million consulting fee for a $1.3 billion acquisition deal. Olympus recently fired its first non-Japanese CEO, Michael Woodward. in mid-October, allegedly in retaliation for his blowing the whistle on the inordinately large advisory fee.
Camera maker Olympus will delay reporting its financial results from the second quarter until later in November, the company revealed on Friday. It is doing so because it needs time to hear out an independent committe's investigation on a scandal involving allegedly paying excessive fees when it aquired Gyrus and other companies. The committee will look into whether there was any illegitimate or inappropriate activity or improper management decisions relating to the deals.
The growing scandal at Olympus over excessive advisory fees totaling over $1 billion has taken a new twist with the company's chairman sensationally resigning. The news comes just a day after the now former chairman and president Tsuyoshi Kikukawa issued a stinging rebuke at ex-CEO Michael Woodford for leaking details of financial mismanagement within the camera and medical components giant. Just days ago, Woodford revealed that he had been forced from the company by the board after discovering the gross over-payments and threatening to make them public if an explanation was not forthcoming.
The besieged chairman of Olympus has launched into a stinging attack on sacked Olympus CEO Michael Woodford over the company’s advisory fee scandal. Tsuyoshi Kikukawa delivered his rebuke via an internal company memo. In the memo, Kikukawa called Woodford’s actions “aberrant” and “unforgivable” in response to Woodford’s exposure of a series of exorbitant advisory fees that have totaled over $1 billion.
Olympus is reportedly subject to a probe by the Federal Bureau of investigation following its recent advisory fee scandal. Its former British CEO and thirty-year veteran of Olympus Michael Woodford was sensationally sacked on October 14 after an emergency board meeting. This led to Woodford promptly turning whistleblower and revealing a massive $687 million advisory payment made following the $2.2 billion acquisition of Gyrus, a medical equipment manufacturer.
Imaging and camera maker Olympus has admitted that it paid two financial advisers $687 million in fees for a $1.3 acquisition the company made in 2008. That is twice the amount that Olympus chairman, Tsuyoshi Kikukawa, acknowledged paying on Tuesday. It also is the amount that former CEO Michael Woodford on Friday had publicly claimed was involved, shortly after which he was fired.
Fired Olympus CEO Michael Woodford, the only non-Japanese director of the company, now says his firing on Friday was the result of an "emergency" board meeting following his intention to accusing the chairman and former CEO of financial improprieties, according to a report in The New York Times. Woodford accuses Olympus of overpaying for financial advice and acquisitions that later were written off, and says they destroyed $1.3 billion in shareholder value.
Japanese camera company has fired its CEO, Michael Woodford, on Friday. The first non-Japanese Olympus CEO was let go over disputes over the strategy of the firm, which led to a 17 percent share price drop. Olympus' board unanimously dismissed Woodford as president and CEO, but has retained him as director until a suitable replacement is found through a vote at the next annual shareholders' meeting.
