(Financial Times) -- In the three and a half weeks since Olympus' ousted British chief executive accused it of mislaying more than $1bn of shareholders' money, the truth has emerged fitfully, in a series of half-disclosures that have invited more questions than they answered.
The latest revelation, while the most startling so far, is just as incomplete.
In an abrupt reversal, the company now says money it claimed to have spent on acquisitions -- including its 2008 purchase of the UK medical equipment group Gyrus -- was actually used to patch up its own balance sheet, after losses were made under now-retired executives in the 1990s.
"It has become clear that advisory fees and funds used to buy back preferred shares in the acquisition of Gyrus, as well as funds used in the purchase of three new domestic businesses ... were used, among other things, to dispose of unrealised losses on securities, the reporting of which had been put off," Olympus said.
Shuichi Takayama, its president, called the actions "highly inappropriate" and apologised for causing "trouble". But he asserted the three directors who have been implicated in the affair -- two of whom lost their executive positions on Tuesday -- had acted with the company's best interests at heart, having "inherited" the repair effort from unnamed predecessors.
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