The Olympus Scandal: Poster Child for Corporate Fraud in Japan | Inside the Storm | FD Finance

Olympus an Asian brand revered around the globe The company took the world of photography by storm in the early 1970s with a camera of uncompromising quality this is the Olympus 1970s film cameras this is one of the aesthetic that I love in 1972 a legend was born the Olympus om1 was half the weight of rival cameras without sacri ricing any professional features it would be years before the rest of the pack caught up but then Olympus was hit by a corporate Scandal that rocked the business world at the time I thought it was ridiculous I don't believe it it was 13 years of covering up bad corporate practices from a company that everyone admired this is the story of how one of Asia's greatest companies Rose From the Ashes of one of the industry's worst corporate scandals he was going to get to the bottom of what it happened and Olympus management did not want that to happen [Music] based in Shinjuku Tokyo Olympus has made a name for itself as a global player in the world of Photography it also Diversified into high-tech medical equipment establishing itself as one of the leading manufacturers of endoscopy equipment Anne Valerie Olen professor of business strategy uses Olympus as a case study for her students Olympus was always known for high quality products it actually started um in 1919 in Tokyo making microscopes and so naturally moved on to medical technology devices and then with time it started making lenses because it was making lenses for the microscopes anyway and from there it went into the camera business and into digital photography in 1936 they introduced their first camera the semi Olympus 1 people think of Olympus as a camera company but it's it's it's really one of the it's probably the best medical equipment franchise in the world I mean it really is [Music] it's it's like the Google of of the endoscope [Music] business with Japan's economic boom in the 1970s Olympus strengthened its production space that expanded internationally with three core products microscopes cameras and medical devices what you can't take a bad picture Cheryl neither can you with Olympus om10 so Olympus had a very good reputation in terms of culture it was very Japanese um but um kikukawa their CEO actually applied a western management style to the company and was um lorded for that he was a very charismatic person um very well liked and so the the company invested heavily in Innovation a lot more than a lot of the other Japanese companies at the time what we mean when we say Japanese culture is that we refer more to collectivist cultures as as is the case in a lot of Asian countries so there's a great sense of loyalty towards one's employer it's cultures that tend to be quite hierarchical where one does not question authority and where one um what the boss say so very loyal uh very very strong bonded cultures Kika joined Olympus in 1964 and Rose through the ranks to become president in 2001 he was well respected by his peers and was instrumental in pushing Olympus forward in the digital era and in 2011 he hired their first foreign president and Chief Operating Officer Michael Woodford Woodford had already made a name for himself by growing olympus' International Medical business significantly kikawa was confident that he could do likewise at their Tokyo [Music] headquarters I turned up in the monolith building at the headquarters of Olympus in Shinjuku and I was taken in to see kikukawa he was a very Charming Man he talked to me about you know my family and he knew them all by name and then he said he'd been running the company for years he didn't think he had changed it enough and felt you know I could do what was necessary and would I take the job and we didn't discuss terms or anything I just said yes in his 30 years at Olympus woodford's impact quickly earns him a position heading the company's European business there he successfully overhauled the European operations and made it profitable kikukawa was impressed with his accomplishments and trusted him kikukawa and the rest of the board were very happy to appoint him said that Woodford had exceeded all expectations and that he would make a great CEO and this is COO of the medical technology devices so medical devices not of in all of Olympus it was Global head hiring a foreigner as president and coo is unusual in the Japanese corporate environment in most businesses the practice is to hire employees fresh out of University who then work their way up the ladder and of course it takes a long time to become a board member of a company if you look back 30 40 years ago basically no fallenness were hired by Japanese companies right but from the start there were signs that the new appointment might not be all that it seemed Woodford soon realized that he did not have the power to make fundamental decisions as kikua created the position of CEO for himself when I was off of the job and became president that's what I thought I was becoming but Kiku kawasan uh had other ideas the president formerly would have been the CEO but he made himself chairman and CEO which I came to realize meant that he controlled the board you know I quickly saw that you know he controlled all the levers and the board were literally puppets and he was the Puppet Master there was there was no ifs or buts it's whatever kikukawa said was the course to be followed in 2011 less than four months after being appointed president Woodford stumbled on a long buried secret about Olympus made public in a local magazine I was in Hamburg chairing the European board meeting and uh in a break I received a an email from a friend of mine he said Michael you need to know this magazine faka has made these extraordinary Revelations about Olympus it had this article suggesting that some of the Acquisitions that Olympus made were there was something wrong with them they paid too much money uh for to people whose identities could not be really ascertained so what was the purpose of of these deals was what it was asking Woodford contacted his close friend waku Miller his translator for corporate relations with the Japanese media and showed him the shocking allegations to be perfectly honest with you and this is something that uh I will be ashamed of to the Grave the tone of the magazine is very forceful it's very Sensational and uh the tone put me off I mean the tone of the article made me not want to believe it that should have put up a bigger red flag for me than it did Mah was very concerned about the uh the amount of death that they had incurred and and I should have paid more attention to that Woodford was eager to get to the bottom of the controversial charges and the only way was to speak directly to his boss kikukawa and I found my secretary machiko and said mcho can I can I see kokawa please it's very important and then micho mcho phones back and says Michael um flat as a pancake uh Kiku kawaan is very very busy today today secretary tells me but as you're so insistent and adds emphasis to the word insistent he will see you today at lunch time this was the first time that Woodford realized the limits on his authority inside Olympus when he started asking questions and and he was getting stonewalled it was a real shock for him to realize that uh you know he was he was Shackled In This Way Woodford was able to get Kiku and vice president hiashi Mori to meet him in person I I can remember that lunch meeting the first time I was to challenge and confront kikukawa vividly like it was yesterday and um I walked in and there was a large boardroom table and right in the center was Kiku kawasan the chairman and marisan who in effect managed all the financial transactions of the company kikukawa and Mory sat dead center of a long [Music] table where I was to sit was a chuna sandwich and if you're not Japanese you you you may not understand the significance I mean everyone knew I loved uh sushi but this tuna sandwich it was still wrapped up in Japan you would never leave the the cling film on it there was no salad or crisps around it it was just you know that would you just would never do that in Japan and I understood and and I was thrown that you know disorientated me that the message for me and many of the messages in Japan is non-verbal communication kikukawa was a luxury Sushi platter at Olympus and I was the Mankey chuna sandwich and I shouldn't forget it for Woodford the message was clear without uttering a single word kikukawa had made it clear that as a Foreigner Woodford had no business interfering in olympus' most sensitive Affairs and smiling away and he said Michael Michael um you're too busy to worry about these domestic issues as the president of Olympus Woodford knew it was his responsibility to sign off the accounts and answer to the company Auditors so I said you know I know that you are uh very busy today can I suggest that talk with Mari s alone and he didn't like it and he sort of huffed and Gruff and left the room and I was then alone with Mari as vice president at Olympus Mor reported directly to Woodford who expected transparency and honesty from his staff Woodford was disappointed that Moray had withheld the factor article from him and pressed him further on the allegations of three terrible Acquisitions including a f face cream and microwave company as well as paying $687 million in advisory fees to an unknown company in the Cayman [Music] Islands and he just ignored my questions and it was one of the most disorientating things I've ever had in my life I started you know to to to to get tense with him and I said we we've bought a company which makes microwave dishes I mean we're we're a healthc care company Maron it was obvious there was something very wrong though not only were they paying a lot of money for companies that weren't making a lot of money simply put but on top of it they were paying Consulting fees for advice that was no way worth that amount of money and I got angry and I got up and I walked around the table and came very close to him and I asked him I said you know Marian you who do you work for who do you work for you know as long as I live I'll never forget Mar's response to that question and he pointed and he said to me I work for K caran I'm loyal to Kiko [Music] caran [Music] in 2011 English businessman Michael Woodford who'd been brought in to modernize Japanese Electronics Giants Olympus was being increasingly isolated from company chairman Kiku cower and other senior managers at Olympus he'd found evidence of serious corporate wrongdoing now he had to make a tough decision do you continue demanding answers or do you quietly fall into line woodford's mother instilled in him a strong sense of right and wrong when he was still a little boy I remember I went to buy some chocolate and I took some money from her purse and uh I thought she wouldn't notice and when I came back uh she was waiting for me and she had quite a temper and uh I thought I was going to you know I was going to be in for it but all she said to me was you know you've stolen money from one of your family you know what does that say about you know if I can't trust my own son and you know that was seared on my Consciousness about you know stealing and even if you could get away from it what does it say about you pravine N is a business psychologist with almost two decades of experience what tends to drive a whistleblower to speak out would be where they fall within this Continuum of justice and loyalty so if we were to do it like a straight line uh and Justice being over here and loyalty being over here the closer they are to the Justice aspect uh would probably make them more likely to speak out woodford's connection to Olympus began with him working for one of their contractors keed in 1981 where he ran a tight ship this was when he first met waku Miller my firm was producing a Japanese language magazine for the British Embassy one of our stops was the company Keet in South in and uh Michael was uh the president of Kat at the time we visited my first experience with Michael was having them check the reverse English translation of the draft uh that we'd written about the company and uh it was it was a tremendously trying experience he was just absolutely obsessive about perfection Woodford went on to head olympus' entire European business Michael Woodford was very successful in Europe and and he managed to restructure the the European organization in a very uh solid way was also very well known for his compliance uh issues and regulations he strikes me as a real goal catter uh very intelligent very smart business smart but also very well first to lead a team towards success as a company towards a financial solid uh company and I think that Kika was at that moment was very appreciated of that and brought them into Tokyo as head of Olympus Europe Woodford made the region the biggest contributor to the company's profits it was then that President kikua offered him the presidency Michael Woodford spent almost his entire career at Olympus so he's always had this reputation of being somebody that was very honest very ethical and would go out of his way to call on people if they weren't being honest and ethical he started off initially at Cadbury shps um before that he was an intern in um in a small Aerospace company and there he already had the reputation of a whistleblower so at the time he had um denounced I guess is the word um a secretary that had used uh office stamps to send her Holiday post and he had been asked to leave because of that and then it had proven to be true as Woodford probed deeper and demanded answers of the dubious Acquisitions his relationship with Kika and Mory worsened after The Showdown um over the the sushi platter um the relationship between myself kukar and Mari deteriorate but we went through the motion the allegations against Olympus have been published by Factor less than a month ago and Woodford needed to find a way out of the Tokyo office that could allow him to probe further you know I could feel the contempt oozing from them they they they I I've never felt such Loathing in my life I went to Kar and and said to him you know I think I should visit our factories which lie outside of Japan and in the Czech Republic in Germany in Britain in America and uh he snapped at it you know he wanted me out of the Tokyo office as much as I wanted to be out there and uh that was the longest business trip I ever went on and it ended in September in New York by this time the pressure of the unlawful allegations was beginning to take its toll I was drinking a lot by then um just to try to sedate myself um and uh we went to a steak restaurant and I got got back and it was around half 11: at night and I remember going into the bathroom and looking in the mirror and I was 5 kilos less than I am now and dark you know inset eyes but it wasn't the my physical condition which was troubling me I knew my mental well-being my mental health was deteriorating because you know I knew there was this sickness this problem but I wasn't sure of what to do you know how do I deal with it you know the shareholders don't seem interested the financial institutions the media no one seems to you know is it me who's mad he also realized the board was not aligned with him and wouldn't allow any more investigation into the allegations around the these um fraudulent or or dubious Acquisitions Woodford was having sleepless nights and was becoming dependent on sleeping pills and I remember I had a a brown plastic perspect bottle of sleeping tablets and I looked on the back and it said don't mix with alcohol and I know that's not a good idea but I thought a bad a worse idea was not to sleep so I took two of them went to sleep almost immediately if you've worked in a company for around 30 years you'd feel very close Affinity to that company and to have that company suddenly do something that you're not familiar with or against your personal beliefs that's almost akin to having a family member go against you so that would definitely create feelings of tension that could have manifested in mood swings it could have manifested in sleeplessness it could have manifested in U uh not being able to sustain positive relationships in your life when you're traveling particularly you become even more addictive you know to opening up your emails to see if there's a message maybe your children have written to you but awaiting Woodford in his inbox was worse news the same business magazine had published a follow-up article containing more allegations against Olympus alleging possible links to organized crime but what shocked me it said that these trans transaction were linked to antisocial forces a euphemism for the the Mafia the [Music] Yakuza but the idea that there could be people with tattoos and missing finger ditchit who might want to hurt me or Worse still hurt my wife or even worse hurt my children and you know I was a businessman you know I I I I sent out mission statements and answered emails and visited factories I had no knowledge of how to cope with organized crime whistleblowing is not something that is going to be easy for anyone uh and normally whether or not someone whistle blows will depend a lot on their personal characteristics in Michael woodford's case perhaps what was going on is what we term dissonance cognitive dissonance and that is basically when an individual holds two contrasting beliefs at the same time and it creates a lot of tension discomfort uh a lot of mental pressures despite the growing psychological pressure Woodford continued to press for answers having already tried to raise his concerns in meetings and being rebuffed with tuna sandwiches the revelations in this second Factor article encouraged Woodford to put his concerns in writing over the next 6 weeks Woodford wrote a series of official emails challenging kikukawa and the Olympus board kikukawa actually wrote to me and said Michael it it's not helpful you asking all these questions I'm sure it wasn't helpful um I copied them to all the board members yet in October 2011 kikukawa appointed Woodford CEO as well as president but what may have seemed to be a positive change was actually hardly publicized in Japan I think what's interesting and one intriguing anecdote is the fact that when Woodford was appointed CEO so even after he was promoted from Co to coo position his promotion was only written up in the English language website and not on the Japanese website but an actual fact when I became CEO he had blind utter loyalty from all the other board members who are all Japanese males in the latter stages of their career complete blind loyalty but the promotion didn't stop Woodford from continuing to ask difficult questions he wrote his final email to the board this time copying in an outside auditing firm the last letter I wrote in the UK and I included a report from PWC an independent auditor one of the big four um which confirmed the concerns I I had now for the other directors you know $1.7 billion US had been spent on these three Mickey Mouse companies and from this consultancy from a company which went under the name of axim or Asus you know you know even if those people were the devil personified for their own self-interest the president is asking to bring in forensic accountants within the same email Woodford explicitly asked for the resignation of kuawa as well as Mor and I pressed it you know you watch your thing email send and then I watched to see because I I asked for reply receipts and you know half an hour later I saw that the Japanese director working in the United States um responded and you know read it and then obviously he had founded and woken everyone up in Tokyo and they all started to come in Woodford was summoned to an extraordinary board meeting back in Tokyo I walk into the boardroom at a few minutes before 9: this you know long board table again uh but the board meeting has a lot of pump and ceremony and there's all these people on on a second a group of chairs behind and tables um translators and note takers and advisers and all sorts of people and uh when I walk in it was noisy much more noisy and it reminded me of one of those hard life programs with hyenas it had that feel of Hysteria in the room I sitting there feeling very uncomfortable noting that nobody will look at me you know this non-verbal communication and a few minutes past 9 and I start to look at my watch in an exaggerated manner because meetings never start late this was the meeting that would change the fates of Olympus and Woodford forever [Music] [Music] English businessman Michael Woodford had taken an extraordinary business decision demanding the resignation of the top man at Olympus the same man who had given him his job the board immediately called an emergency meeting almost 15 minutes later kikukawa turns up and kikukawa didn't come to his seat at the top of the table he went to the podium in the in in the far corner of the room so he got this Tatty piece of paper out of his pocket and said today's meetings to discuss serious concerns about lmses and he said uh that has been cancelled that agenda and the new uh agenda is the dismissal of Michael Woodford as president representative director and CEO and on the last syllable all the people around the table put their hands up supporting the the motion that I'm dismissed I wanted to speak at the board meeting I I had document I had prepared the night before of questions I wanted to ask but I was told that I wasn't allowed to speak less than eight months after being named president of the Japanese electronics brand and barely a fortnite after becoming CEO Michael Woodford was left with no choice but to pack his belongings and leave the building but just as he was leaving another senior Olympus executive entered his office and he he's a big guy as big as me and he came up to me and um he called me by my first name Michael now I don't mind what people call me but he didn't normally it was Woodford SEL president um in Japanese but again it was a a way of of asserting and um he said to me give me your computers and I said I can't because they've already gone back to the UK securely he got very angry and then demanded my mobile phones and I had a a Samsung which I gave him and uh I smiled at him and said I've wiped it and then I I had my Apple iPhone and I said again I got angry and said you know my wife is going to be worried you know who are you are you are you a policeman you know are you going to take it off me I'm not going to give it you woodford's translator an American who now calls himself waku Miller had worked closely with him and was handling his corporate relations with the Japanese media he was one of the first to find out about the sacking they fire Michael because even though he's been in the organization for 30 years they've discovered to their great surprise that this person is in fact unilateral and arbitrary in his management style and that he's simply not suited to a Japanese organization he was going to get to the bottom of what had happened to this company and Olympus management did not want that to happen happen Woodford left the Olympus office and headed back to his apartment in Tokyo at the reception area he noticed several heavily muscled men who are these people and that just fed my fear and I very particular about the way I pack because I travel a lot but I just threw everything into this case um and was out of the eight or nine minutes and they were still there in the library downstairs you know I was sweating profusely I was starting to tremble I found Jonathan soel from there who was the financial times correspondent in Japan and I said Jonathan you know it it there's so much more to this you know can we meet and he said there's a a small Cafe across the the the road and uh we met him there 10 minutes later my first question was you know are you okay what happens he said there's hundreds of millions of dollars missing and it became clear that he was worried that he was in danger that people might be following him uh or worse a lot of money had left Olympus a lot of money had been taken out of this company uh in mysterious and suspicious ways he explained what he thought was happening inside Olympus he presented me with a uh binder full of evidence to back up his case uh and then he went to the airport uh he he took a suitcase and said and I want to get on the first plane that I can I don't feel safe and I spent the next few hours going through through uh his evidence of course I contacted Olympus to get uh a comment from them uh spoke talked over with editors and lawyers uh and the thing he said to me before he left was you know can I trust you to carry this story [Music] through and then 10 hours later he uh he got off that plane a plane in heo uh and uh his wife was there with the copy of the Ft that she bought at the airport I think uh with his story on the front page back in the UK Woodford was determined to hold kikukawa and his board accountable he did as many interviews with the international press as possible making sure that the Scandal went Global all of them have to go all of them have to go if they don't then that means there's a tolerance of the either incompetence or much much worse as well as continuing to talk to the media he started planning his next direct move against Olympus we're making progress I'd put together a new board of Japanese all Japanese senior figures but um the institutional shareholders it became clear they wouldn't speak out they wouldn't criticize Olympus this is the three Mega Banks and the insurance company you know whilst I'd hoped I could get Olympus back on you know the right path uh I I knew it was beyond my abilities to change Japan in you know corporate Japan needed to change and you know I I couldn't do that Olympus stuck to their story their official stance Woodford did not understand Japanese business practices a new president was brought in for damage [Music] control I think that they were just desperately hoping they could get away with it that they could contain it that they could discredit him the whole way along they underestimated how much was going to come out no matter what they said uh they would admit only the bare minimum that people are basically are with one company for all their career and I think this sort of dominates a lot of the things that we see in the Japanese company because often what is called loyalty might also be dependence as someone for his career for his well-being and I've heard the Japanese media described by by many as sycophantic that they they bow down to the big Japanese corporations and don't want to rock the boat and ask the difficult questions and definitely from the outside looking at how they behaved as a former journalist myself that's exactly what they were doing in this case while the Japanese media shied away from the story The International media latched onto it the sheer scale of the fraud meant that the Fallout was going to get [Music] bigger Mark Worthington is an expert on how to manage business scandals after a decade as correspondent for BBC News he currently oversees crisis communication strategies for several multinational corporations the fact that the the company was still denying even when the international media were were writing openly about the allegations and and referring to the CEO as being the one who was was making them is quite extraordinary it's hard to see how that could happen anywhere else other than Japan it seemed a pretty indefensible position and yet the denials were still coming and a motivating factor for that can only be the kind of corporate loyalty and that culture that you find in Japan that was hugely damaging to their reputation in a situation like this when a company like Olympus faces these kinds of challenges the worst thing you can possibly do is be seen to be denying lying covering up by November 2011 Olympus finally admitted to hiding massive losses the company revealed that they'd made dubious Acquisitions to cover up bad Investments since before 1990 it had taken 20 years for their wrongdoings to come to light kikukawa resigned 2 weeks prior to the admissions and Murray was dismissed for his role in the fraud but this was only the beginning of a massive shakeup within the Olympus board in December retired Supreme Court judge kanaka um reported and huge report and uh described Olympus as a board of Yes Men and Vindicated the action I'd taken which then LED really to the the whole board having to step down as at the extraordinary general meeting the following April today at those meetings for the first time I had a sense of relief comparable to when Jonathan published is that this story will be different the Tokyo District Court ruled that dismiss president Su Yoshi kikukawa and five other members of the board had to pay more than $500 million us to Olympus but the damage had already been done Olympus shares which remained steady since the Scandal broke out out suddenly plummeted by almost 70% in less than a month the impact of this Scandal on Olympus reputationally in terms of its finances uh in terms of its staff were colossal and cannot be underestimated if we start on a reputational level they became almost the poster child for corporate fraud corporate failure corporate cover up uh and their name became synonymous with those things the Olympus case raised wider questions on how corporations were managed Japanese Financial Regulators had long tolerated a common business practice of hiding losses known in Japan as tobashi what happened is that in the80s um many companies had some problems growing their main markets any longer especially after after the re evaluation of the Yen and the Yen increased in value and maybe some of their overseas markets broke away um Japanese companies looked for other way to increase their revenues many of these companies made disastrous Investments that ended up in massive losses and when the Japanese bubble finally burst most of the corporations didn't know how to cover their tracks the tobashi was a way to hide those losses in some Affiliated companies um maybe with some other companies so that the losses would not appear in the books of the main and in the statements balance statements of the main company any longer and but eventually they had to pay up for that and I think this is then when companies got into problems finding ways to make up for those losses the tobashi scheme was banned in early 2000s but there are still Japanese corporations that continue with it behind closed doors in 2015 Toshiba president hia Tanaka was forced to step down at the electronics and computer Giants when a similar Scandal came to light since the Olympus Scandal uh there's been a new corporate governance code put in place uh that recommends things like um putting independent uh directors on the boards of every company that kind of thing uh which had not been common you know in Japan before that uh this effort was uh underway before the Olympus Scandal but the Olympus Scandal I think definitely gave it uh a kind of Tailwind that helped that helped convince you know some Skeptics that it was worthwhile to try and to try and repair you know the the reputation for Japanese financial markets and companies for a lot of people was no sense to leave the company immediately because the fundamentals of the company and the structure that was in the various regions and in the various organizations was was was good but change was still needed at the top a new board took over the Reigns from kikukawa and set out to restructure the company they wanted to go back into the core business of medical clinical division microscopy products and the camera products they also took a number of steps in terms of corporate governance reporting making sure they had external Auditors that were really um independent and not linked to the board in any way the Scandal was reminiscent of the collapse of American Gas and energy Giants Enron some 10 years before this led to a commitment to the comprehensive reform of business practices setting new compliance standards for corporate management the Olympus case did for Japan what Enron did for the US so every time you have a scandal polic policy makers um shareholders boards will question the way business was always done and whether it should be done this way and just like it changed Enron changed the um the governance policies and the board liabilities and so on in the US Olympus did the same thing for Japanese businesses when we look at Olympus today it is hugely different to the Olympus at the time the Scandal took place and the fact that trust had been completely destroyed left them with no choice but to completely rebuild and to rebuild very openly so we saw the new management talk about total transparency in 2012 Olympus released a report to reassure their investors led by new president hiruki Sasa from their medical equipment marketing Division and former Banker yasuyuki kimoto as their new chairman the board promised to win back public trust and to prevent another scandal from occurring [Music] they comprehensively overhauled the way that the company was structured the way that it communicated the way that it was governed making sure that checks and balances were in place but also demonstrating openly to investors and the outside world what was happening because in a situation like the one Olympus faced when you are that broken and your reputation is that low you're not going to be able to communicate your way out of that situation you have to demonstrate what you're doing a new set of protocols was put in place to regain the Public's trust and it started with the most basic regulations and signatories the way Olympus was recovering and gain the trust back from the public and from their customers was to put regulations in place regulations on signatories people for certain amounts a certain level of signature were required and always in twofold uh others were regulations that all the staff had to sign forms that they will not uh conduct any uh wrongdoings with money like briberies or even sponsorships Etc so everything was very much scrutinized so once this the the company was restructured or the board of the company was restructured um everything recovered quite easily because the the the the local structures of the the organizations were very solid and very good despite the Scandal the public perception of Olympus as a manufacturer of high-tech cameras hasn't [Music] faded and the tech team is still creating new products that keep the brand relevant Lance on is a camera fan who swears by the Olympus equipment range he's been using their cameras since 2002 and vouches for their quality which has vastly improved despite the internal mismanagement 2002 they are the first one who introduced the five exis uh image stabilization which is the first in the world and also that is the game changer uh for the whole mirer system where all other brands start to jump into mirrorless system where to compete with uh all [Music] mirrorless cameras drastically reduce the size of previously bulky DSLR systems without sacrificing image quality a camera setup is now a fraction of what it used to cost making photography much more affordable to both professionals as well as enthusiasts the greatest Advantage for Olympus to go into microed where they make the camera smaller yet you can still have a digital slrr image quality this changed the whole ball game where they become the leading brand of mirror and until today they are still one of the leing bre for camera system or mirror camera system since the fraud Michael Woodford has published a book exposure inside the Olympus Scandal detailing his role as a whistleblower in the indictment of the former Olympus board these days Woodford works as is a consultant for many large companies advising them on how to prevent the same thing from happening to their corporations signs that that Olympus has come out of the crisis are now all around us their name is no longer a name that is associated with with the misdeeds of the past probably the first indicator to the outside world is the share price when the confidence starts to return and that's the market looking at the steps that been taken reading in depth the documents that are setting out the new corporate governance policies the philosophies of the new leadership still six years on they still have a big share of the market in endoscopy and microscopy and they're they're doing very well with our camera business so they were able to turn around and and and they're doing well again so back from the [Music] brink [Music] yeah

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Id: p6uzumJ3mhc

Length: 47min 50sec (2870 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 07 2024