オリンパス社長解任劇 [オリンパス]
オリンパス社長解任劇のミステリー
日本の企業統治(corporate governance)は世界経済の恥なのか。
オリンパス社長を解任されたマイケル・ウッドフォード氏
オリンパスの社長マイケル・ウッドフォード氏が社長就任後わずか半年で、１０月１４日に突然、社長職を解任された。
会社の説明によると、は日本の文化的慣習に従わなかったからだという。
しかし、この社長解任劇、非常に根が深いものがあるようで、オリンパスの不可解な経営体質が次第に浮き彫りになってきている。
この問題、日本のマスコミはあまり報道したがらないようだが、海外のマスコミではかなり大々的に報道されている。
英国誌エコノミスト１０月号では、このオリンパスの社長解任劇について、詳しく論じています。
◆オリンパスは２００８年に、イギリスの医療機器メーカージャイラスを買収したが、この時、ファイナンシャル・アドバイザー会社のAXAMとAXESの両社に、顧問料として買収金額の３０％にものぼる金額を支払っている。通常の顧問料は買収価格の１％程度だという。
しかもこれらのファイナンシャル・アドバイザー会社、所有者が不明となっているらしい。
マイケル・ウッドフォード氏が、この法外とも思える顧問料の支払いについて、役員に説明を迫ったために解任されたというのが、真相らしい。
この異常とも思えるオリンパスの買収取引については、今年FACTAという雑誌が報道したため明るみに出たものだが、他の日本のマスコミではなぜかこの件についてはほとんど触れていない。
オリンパスは１９１９年に顕微鏡メーカーとして創業、カメラメーカーとして有名だが、内視鏡などの医療用画像技術の分野では、世界シェアの７割を占めている大企業である。
あまりにも閉鎖的な日本の企業統治、海外からはかなり疑いの目で見られているが、世界の経済市場から信頼される企業体質になることはできないのだろうか。
◆この問題、詳しくはFACTAの以下の記事をご覧ください。
オリンパス 「無謀M＆A」巨額損失の怪
関連サイトはこちらです
オリンパス損失隠し
Corporate governance in Japan
Olympian depths
What the Olympus saga says about corporate governance in Japan
Oct 22nd 2011 | TOKYO | from the print edition
“THIS is a referendum on modern-day corporate Japan,” fumes Michael Woodford, a Brit cast down from the heights of Olympus, a Japanese camera maker. Mr Woodford was ousted as the company’s president on October 14th, after barely six months in the job. Tsuyoshi Kikukawa, the 71-year-old chairman, blasted him for failing to hew to Japanese cultural practices. The board voted unanimously at a ten-minute meeting where Mr Woodford was not allowed to speak. Take a bus to the airport, he was told.
Mr Woodford says his sacking may have more to do with some very large and unusual transactions that he challenged Mr Kikukawa and other executives to explain. They stonewalled him, according to internal company correspondence reviewed by The Economist.
Mr Woodford alerted Olympus’s auditors, commissioned a review by an outside forensic-accounting group and asked for the resignations of Mr Kikukawa and an associate. He has since handed a dossier on the matter to Britain’s Serious Fraud Office—much of the money flowed from Olympus’s accounts in Britain.
Olympus paid $687m in advisory fees relating to the purchase in 2008 of Gyrus, a British firm that makes medical instruments. The money went to AXAM, a firm incorporated in the Cayman Islands, and AXES, a firm in New York. The owners of AXAM/AXES are unknown. Neither firm can now be traced. Olympus paid a generous $2.2 billion for Gyrus, 100 times its annual pre-tax earnings. The advisory fee was even more generous: more than 30% of the purchase price, rather than the usual 1%. Olympus also paid $773m for three small, private companies in fields not obviously connected to cameras—cosmetics, plastic containers and waste-disposal. It wrote off 76% of the value of the deals a few months later. Olympus vigorously denies wrongdoing, but several banks lowered their ratings on its stock and Goldman Sachs on October 19th suspended its ratings entirely.
Founded as a microscope maker in 1919, Olympus is known for cameras but it is also a powerhouse in medical-imaging technology, such as endoscopes, where it has a 70% share of the global market. Net sales have declined for the past four years and the camera division is unprofitable. Mr Woodford was promoted to president after he cut costs and turned around Olympus’s European business.
Mr Woodford says that at the time he had “no idea” the firm had been so profligate. Its debt-to-equity ratio of nearly 500% made it the seventh-most-indebted company in Japan. He also says he was unaware of oddities in the Gyrus deal, even though he was the top European executive at the time. The write-offs took place during the global financial crisis, when gloomy announcements were so common that they ceased to startle anyone.
Corporate governance is a problem in Japan (see table). The country ranks 33rd among 38 countries for corporate governance, according to GMI, a firm that measures such things, making it worse than Russia, Brazil and China. CLSA, a broker, complains that Japanese firms “express hostility to reforms”. Regulators are mediocre. There is no requirement for independent directors. Few foreigners serve on Japanese boards and the proportion of women, at 1%, is less than in Kuwait.
Japanese chief executives are often figureheads, while real (but informal) power resides elsewhere, perhaps with the chairman. Mr Woodford challenged this convention. A traditional Japanese manager might have tackled the problem discreetly instead of embarrassing his peers.
KPMG was Olympus’s auditor in 2008; Ernst & Young in 2009. Both firms’ British offices placed a formal qualification on Gyrus’s accounts because the firm failed to show that it had no relationship to AXAM/AXES. However their Japan offices, though not required to follow the British decision, approved the Olympus group accounts without knowing the answer to this rather glaring conundrum.
Olympus’s odd transactions were first reported this summer by a small investigative magazine called Facta, but ignored by the mainstream Japanese press. Local media have made surprisingly little of the story, even as Olympus’s market value has roughly halved. Japanese regulators, too, have not made much fuss. Olympus suggests it may sue Mr Woodford for disclosing confidential information to the media. Mr Woodford says he would welcome that day in court.
日本の企業統治(corporate governance)は世界経済の恥なのか。
オリンパス社長を解任されたマイケル・ウッドフォード氏
オリンパスの社長マイケル・ウッドフォード氏が社長就任後わずか半年で、１０月１４日に突然、社長職を解任された。
会社の説明によると、は日本の文化的慣習に従わなかったからだという。
しかし、この社長解任劇、非常に根が深いものがあるようで、オリンパスの不可解な経営体質が次第に浮き彫りになってきている。
この問題、日本のマスコミはあまり報道したがらないようだが、海外のマスコミではかなり大々的に報道されている。
英国誌エコノミスト１０月号では、このオリンパスの社長解任劇について、詳しく論じています。
◆オリンパスは２００８年に、イギリスの医療機器メーカージャイラスを買収したが、この時、ファイナンシャル・アドバイザー会社のAXAMとAXESの両社に、顧問料として買収金額の３０％にものぼる金額を支払っている。通常の顧問料は買収価格の１％程度だという。
しかもこれらのファイナンシャル・アドバイザー会社、所有者が不明となっているらしい。
マイケル・ウッドフォード氏が、この法外とも思える顧問料の支払いについて、役員に説明を迫ったために解任されたというのが、真相らしい。
この異常とも思えるオリンパスの買収取引については、今年FACTAという雑誌が報道したため明るみに出たものだが、他の日本のマスコミではなぜかこの件についてはほとんど触れていない。
オリンパスは１９１９年に顕微鏡メーカーとして創業、カメラメーカーとして有名だが、内視鏡などの医療用画像技術の分野では、世界シェアの７割を占めている大企業である。
あまりにも閉鎖的な日本の企業統治、海外からはかなり疑いの目で見られているが、世界の経済市場から信頼される企業体質になることはできないのだろうか。
◆この問題、詳しくはFACTAの以下の記事をご覧ください。
オリンパス 「無謀M＆A」巨額損失の怪
関連サイトはこちらです
オリンパス損失隠し
Corporate governance in Japan
Olympian depths
What the Olympus saga says about corporate governance in Japan
Oct 22nd 2011 | TOKYO | from the print edition
“THIS is a referendum on modern-day corporate Japan,” fumes Michael Woodford, a Brit cast down from the heights of Olympus, a Japanese camera maker. Mr Woodford was ousted as the company’s president on October 14th, after barely six months in the job. Tsuyoshi Kikukawa, the 71-year-old chairman, blasted him for failing to hew to Japanese cultural practices. The board voted unanimously at a ten-minute meeting where Mr Woodford was not allowed to speak. Take a bus to the airport, he was told.
Mr Woodford says his sacking may have more to do with some very large and unusual transactions that he challenged Mr Kikukawa and other executives to explain. They stonewalled him, according to internal company correspondence reviewed by The Economist.
Mr Woodford alerted Olympus’s auditors, commissioned a review by an outside forensic-accounting group and asked for the resignations of Mr Kikukawa and an associate. He has since handed a dossier on the matter to Britain’s Serious Fraud Office—much of the money flowed from Olympus’s accounts in Britain.
Olympus paid $687m in advisory fees relating to the purchase in 2008 of Gyrus, a British firm that makes medical instruments. The money went to AXAM, a firm incorporated in the Cayman Islands, and AXES, a firm in New York. The owners of AXAM/AXES are unknown. Neither firm can now be traced. Olympus paid a generous $2.2 billion for Gyrus, 100 times its annual pre-tax earnings. The advisory fee was even more generous: more than 30% of the purchase price, rather than the usual 1%. Olympus also paid $773m for three small, private companies in fields not obviously connected to cameras—cosmetics, plastic containers and waste-disposal. It wrote off 76% of the value of the deals a few months later. Olympus vigorously denies wrongdoing, but several banks lowered their ratings on its stock and Goldman Sachs on October 19th suspended its ratings entirely.
Founded as a microscope maker in 1919, Olympus is known for cameras but it is also a powerhouse in medical-imaging technology, such as endoscopes, where it has a 70% share of the global market. Net sales have declined for the past four years and the camera division is unprofitable. Mr Woodford was promoted to president after he cut costs and turned around Olympus’s European business.
Mr Woodford says that at the time he had “no idea” the firm had been so profligate. Its debt-to-equity ratio of nearly 500% made it the seventh-most-indebted company in Japan. He also says he was unaware of oddities in the Gyrus deal, even though he was the top European executive at the time. The write-offs took place during the global financial crisis, when gloomy announcements were so common that they ceased to startle anyone.
Corporate governance is a problem in Japan (see table). The country ranks 33rd among 38 countries for corporate governance, according to GMI, a firm that measures such things, making it worse than Russia, Brazil and China. CLSA, a broker, complains that Japanese firms “express hostility to reforms”. Regulators are mediocre. There is no requirement for independent directors. Few foreigners serve on Japanese boards and the proportion of women, at 1%, is less than in Kuwait.
Japanese chief executives are often figureheads, while real (but informal) power resides elsewhere, perhaps with the chairman. Mr Woodford challenged this convention. A traditional Japanese manager might have tackled the problem discreetly instead of embarrassing his peers.
KPMG was Olympus’s auditor in 2008; Ernst & Young in 2009. Both firms’ British offices placed a formal qualification on Gyrus’s accounts because the firm failed to show that it had no relationship to AXAM/AXES. However their Japan offices, though not required to follow the British decision, approved the Olympus group accounts without knowing the answer to this rather glaring conundrum.
Olympus’s odd transactions were first reported this summer by a small investigative magazine called Facta, but ignored by the mainstream Japanese press. Local media have made surprisingly little of the story, even as Olympus’s market value has roughly halved. Japanese regulators, too, have not made much fuss. Olympus suggests it may sue Mr Woodford for disclosing confidential information to the media. Mr Woodford says he would welcome that day in court.
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