From what I’ve read online, it seems that Olympus got themselves in a big mess. Reportedly, Olympus paid over $675 million (that equals to almost two years company’s earnings) to unknown accounts in the Cayman Islands. The company that received the payments disappeared two weeks later. The payments were supposed to be a commission for a recent acquisition, the only problems was that such deals are usually done on a 1-3% commission. In that case the commission was over 35%. There were even some accusations of organized crime involvement… Here is the story in links and videos:
- Ex Olympus CEO explains in this FT video interview what exactly happened.
- Olympus may take legal action vs ousted CEO Woodford.
- Bloomberg's video interview with the former Olympus CEO Michael Woodford who said that he would be "delighted" to be sued by Olympus.
- Here is the actual letter sent by the ex-CEO to Olympus board describing in details the questionable transactions.
Olympus stock price went down from 2500 to bellow 1500 (Bloomberg)
