Former Olympus chief confident board will quit

THE BRITISH former chief executive of Japan’s Olympus emerged from a frosty meeting of directors yesterday, convinced its board would eventually quit over an accounting scandal engulfing the firm, but he said he wasn’t “begging” to return and clean up the mess.

Michael Woodford, still an Olympus director despite being fired as chief executive and blowing the whistle over the scam, described the meeting as a tense encounter with no handshakes or apologies offered from the men who had sacked him barely a month ago.

Instead, he said, the board had agreed that the once-proud maker of cameras and medical equipment should strive to avoid being delisted from the Tokyo stock exchange, a sanction that would make the business more vulnerable to takeover.

“I just see a lot of suffering and misery for no gain,” Mr Woodford said of the prospect of a delisting.

“But we should have the investigation, it shouldn’t be fudged,” he told a news conference after the meeting at Olympus’s Tokyo HQ, where he was mobbed by reporters and TV crews as he entered and left the building.

Mr Woodford, back in Japan for the first time since his October 14th sacking, said there had been no talk at the meeting of him returning to his former post.

“There was a tension in the room, but there seemed to be an understanding that it was in no one’s interest to raise the temperature,” he said. “They didn’t shake my hand . . . We said good morning and goodbye.”

Big foreign shareholders have called for Mr Woodford to be reinstated, saying he can restore faith in the 92-year-old firm.

Mr Woodford’s visit – he also met police and other investigators inquiring into the scandal – coincided with a rally in Olympus shares, which have been buoyed by speculation the firm can escape delisting.

The stock rose as much as 25 per cent yesterday before closing up 8.6 per cent at 1,107 yen. It has rebounded a whopping 77 per cent in just four trading days, though it is still down more than half since the day before Mr Woodford’s dismissal.

He said Olympus could survive as long as banks, so far supportive, continued to back it. – (Reuters)