By Jonathan Soble in Tokyo
Olympus, the Japanese camera maker fighting allegations of financial wrongdoing in a series of acquisitions, has acknowledged paying a financial adviser $687m in a 2008 deal, the same amount asserted by its ousted chief executive.
The amount is double what Tsuyoshi Kikukawa, Olympus chairman, said on Tuesday the company had paid, and equates to more than one-third of the value of the acquisition itself. Advisory fees are normally about 1 per cent.
In a statement on Wednesday, Olympus did not explain how it came to pay such a large fee or address the discrepancy with Mr Kikukawa’s earlier claim. It said it had had no contact with the adviser since paying the last instalment of the fee in 2010, and ?had no knowledge of its situation since then?.
Michael Woodford, the former CEO, who was fired by Olympus on Friday, had questioned both the amount paid and the identity of the recipients, which he claims was never ascertained or reported by Olympus. The group’s auditors raised private concerns about the transaction, documents shown to the Financial Times show, and a report by PwC, the audit firm, commissioned by Mr Woodford, said financial misconduct could not be ruled out.
Olympus did not name the adviser in the statement, but in the documents it is listed as Axes Securities, a US-based brokerage, and a related Cayman Islands entity called Axam. Olympus said in the statement that it had performed proper due diligence in the acquisition, in which it purchased the UK-listed medical equipment company Gyrus.
The statement also acknowledged that Mr Woodford, who succeeded Mr Kikukawa as Olympus president in April, had called for the resignation of Mr Kikukawa and other board members. But it stuck by its position that Mr Woodford had been fired
over ?differences in management direction and methods?, not the dispute over the acquisition.
? The Financial Times Limited 2011