miércoles, 14 de diciembre de 2011

Nikkei

Olympus Files Delayed Earnings, Avoids Delisting For Now

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

TOKYO (Dow Jones)--Olympus Corp. (7733) submitted long-delayed earnings results for the fiscal first half on Wednesday, meeting a critical deadline that would keep its shares listed for the immediate future.
But the Japanese maker of cameras and medical-imaging equipment still faces a precarious road ahead as police and regulators step up their investigations into its accounting scandal. If the Tokyo Stock Exchange deems fraudulent accounting had "a material impact," Olympus shares will eventually be delisted.
Olympus restated its figures for the past five years through March 2011, as well as its first quarter earnings for the current fiscal year, to account for more than $1.5 billion in investment losses it had been hiding using inflated payments for acquisitions.
The revision comes after a third-party panel commissioned by Olympus's board last week detailed a complex series of deals involving more than a dozen banks, funds and investment firms world-wide.
Among the revised figures, the company's net profit figure nearly halved for the last fiscal year, which ended in March, to Y3.87 billion from the previously-stated Y7.38 billion.
For the April to September quarter, the company booked a net loss of Y32.33 billion against a year-earlier profit of Y3.81 billion due mainly to one-time losses caused by market deterioration, Thai floods and a decline in the book value of its business assets.
The company also withdrew its full-year outlook, citing uncertainties over the impact of the scandal on its sales activities. Olympus had earlier projected a net profit of Y18 billion.
In a further sign of just how difficult it is to fully unravel Olympus's accounting scandal, KPMG Azsa LLC, the company's auditor until June 2009, attached a qualified opinion for the three years through March 2009. The company said it was unable to obtain sufficient audit evidence for the amount of assets managed by funds involved in the transactions.
A qualified opinion does not entail delisting from the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
Meanwhile, its successor as Olympus's auditor, Ernst & Young ShinNihon LLC, signed off for the two years through March 2011 without qualifications.
On Wednesday, Olympus shares dropped 4.1% to Y1,314 following a recent sharp rally on relief that the company steered clear of automatic delisting.
But the stock remains on the TSE's watch list as the bourse examines whether the fraudulent accounting "would have a material impact," a decision which will result in the shares being removed from the exchange.
Past examples showed that shares were delisted in cases when the false statements were significant enough that a company would fall into negative net worth after the revision or when there was evidence that the falsification was deliberate or widespread.
The exchange's decision on whether to keep the shares listed may also be affected by further developments in ongoing investigations on Olympus by authorities including Japanese police, prosecutors and securities regulators as well as the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.K. Serious Fraud Office.

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