Olympus’ entire board of directors resigning to make way for new leadership

Months after the Olym­pus’ ex-CEO-turned-whistle­blow­er began demand­ing their res­ig­na­tions, the entire board of direc­tors of the scan­dal-rid­den Japan­ese elec­tron­ics mak­er is final­ly step­ping down, the com­pa­ny said today.

“[A]ll the cur­rent direc­tors and cor­po­rate audi­tors express their inten­tions to resign at the end of the extra­or­di­nary gen­er­al share­hold­ers meet­ing and have sub­mit­ted let­ters of res­ig­na­tion to the Com­pa­ny,” Olym­pus announced in a state­ment.

The com­pa­ny also said that it was propos­ing a slate of eleven indi­vid­u­als to be rat­i­fied by share­hold­ers as the new board of direc­tors. Fifty-six year old Hiroyu­ki Sasa, who cur­rent­ly serves as the chief mar­ket­ing offi­cer for Olym­pus’ med­ical imag­ing unit, has been tapped to serve as the com­pa­ny’s new president.

If the pro­posed new board is elect­ed, the num­ber of  what Olym­pus terms “out­side direc­tors” will dou­ble, from three to six.

But major Olym­pus share­hold­ers say the new slate isn’t inde­pen­dent enough. “The clear cred­i­tor ori­en­ta­tion of the board is unac­cept­able,” South­east­ern Asset Man­age­ment, which owns more than five per­cent of Olym­pus’ shares, said in its own state­ment, attrib­uted to vice pres­i­dent Josh Shore. “We are extreme­ly dis­ap­point­ed with the com­po­si­tion of the pro­posed board.”

Olym­pus’ for­mer chief exec­u­tive, Michael Wood­ford, who uncov­ered the account­ing scan­dal that has wiped out much of the val­ue of the com­pa­ny’s stock and led to the arrests of sev­er­al for­mer Olym­pus direc­tors and audi­tors, told Reuters that he agreed with South­east­ern’s con­cerns.

“Look­ing at cap­i­tal rais­ing, to have a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the bank there as the chair­man will only frus­trate and alien­ate any inde­pen­dent for­eign share­hold­er, and I’m sure share­hold­ers in Japan… It’s com­plete­ly and utter­ly wrong,” he said.

In a state­ment post­ed to Olym­pus Grass­roots ear­li­er this month, Wood­ford said he was keep­ing a close eye on the cur­rent dis­graced and dis­cred­it­ed board, but crit­i­cized its mem­bers (who are final­ly quit­ting Olym­pus) for not being more open about their plans to replace themselves.

I am mon­i­tor­ing events at Olym­pus extreme­ly close­ly. Over recent days there have been many rumours about the com­pa­ny form­ing a so called ‘strate­gic alliance’, but the name of any such exter­nal par­ty has not been con­firmed by the com­pa­ny. Equal­ly, we remain unclear in defin­i­tive terms as to whether any of the cur­rent direc­tors plan to put them­selves for­ward again on a new slate and also the names and back­grounds of new can­di­dates. I have strong opin­ions on both these issues, as I’m sure do many thou­sands of oth­er shareholders.

In rela­tion to today’s announce­ment of an extra­or­di­nary share­hold­ers meet­ing on April 20, my inten­tion is cur­rent­ly to attend this and, I believe it will be attend­ed by large num­bers of small share­hold­ers includ­ing com­pa­ny employees.

In this respect, I trust the com­pa­ny will make arrange­ments for a suit­ably large venue (not as in pre­vi­ous years at the Keio Plaza) to allow all share­hold­ers small, large, domes­tic and from over­seas, to have a forum in which to speak out open­ly as they feel fit.

This will be the first for­mal oppor­tu­ni­ty for all the company’s share­hold­ers to ques­tion and hold its man­age­ment to account. Of course inves­ti­ga­tions on three con­ti­nents are ongo­ing and we are there­fore still not in a posi­tion to know the full extent of what took place but before the extra­or­di­nary gen­er­al meet­ing, I believe it is high­ly like­ly there will be fur­ther rev­e­la­tions and all inter­est­ed par­ties should con­tin­ue to close­ly scru­ti­nise events.

- Michael Wood­ford, Feb­ru­ary 5th, 2012

The depar­ture of Olym­pus’ cur­rent, cor­rupt board is long over­due. The com­pa­ny needs fresh blood at its helm to begin rebuild­ing investor and cus­tomer con­fi­dence. And it needs to take seri­ous­ly the con­cerns of for­eign share­hold­ers, not ignore them sim­ply because they do not own a major stake in the company.

It is our hope, as loy­al Olym­pus cus­tomers, that the com­pa­ny will emerge from this dark chap­ter in its his­to­ry by lis­ten­ing to stake­hold­ers, stamp­ing out crony­ism, and triple-check­ing the verac­i­ty of its finan­cial state­ments. More than any­thing else, Olym­pus needs account­able man­age­ment to get it back on track.