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Toshiba CEO, 8 Others, Resign Over $1.2 Billion Accounting Cover-Up
The BBC reports that Toshiba president and chief executive Hisao Tanaka, along with vice-chairman Norio Sasaki, former chief executive Atsutoshi Niched, and six other executives, has resigned from the company in the wake of an accounting scandal: On Monday, an independent panel appointed by Toshiba said the firm had overstated its operating profit by a total of 151.8bn yen ($1.22bn, £780m).
The overstatement was roughly triple an initial estimate by Toshiba. Asia Times has an article that delves into the pressure which drove Tanaka and others to misstate their revenue figures so drastically. From that piece:
Top management and the heads of in-house companies acted on “the shared goal of padding nominal profits,” the report said. President Hisao Tanaka and immediate predecessor Norio Sasaki, now vice chairman, denied intentionally delaying loss-booking, but those who worked below them thought they were being instructed to do so, according to the report. Top management would assign “challenges,” or earnings improvement targets, at monthly meetings with the heads of in-house companies and subsidiaries. These targets were especially aggressive in fiscal 2011 and fiscal 2012, when Sasaki was president. In-house company chiefs felt enormous pressure to meet the goals, the committee concluded.
After the announcement of Tanaka's resignation, the company's stock actually rose six percent. CNBC explains:
Getting the bad news out appears to have eased investors' concerns about the stock.
"The total problem has been quantified and there's a likely chance the CEO will have to quit. That's been seen as the end of that," said Amir Anvarzadeh, director of Japan equity sales at BGC Securities.
resign?
They should learn from my country's statespeople: NEVER RESIGN!!!
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
What, no trial and jail?
I'm sensitive to this kind of corporate nonsense because one of the best career chances I ever had was blown because of executive malfeasance.
Back in 1999, I applied for and was offered a job with UUNET as a UNIX engineer. Great job, smart, fun colleagues. Enter Worldcom and their purchase of us. Everything went south after a few years. Bernie and Scott went off to jail, everyone lost their 401Ks, massive charlie foxtrot. MCI buys us out of bankruptcy, CEO decides to scale down employee numbers. We watched in horror as the man with the cardboard boxes would cruise through your wing of the building and place a cardboard box for your stuff in your cube. Tag! You're gone. I watched so many really talented engineers do the walk of shame. After a couple of years of this, we were bought by Verizon Business. More rounds of layoffs. More good talent flushed so the CEO could look good before the shareholders. I fled at this point and found greener pastures. I probably learned more in these few years than in any other period of my IT career.
That kind of accounting would not be scandalous here, and likely result in huge bonuses instead. I see great futures for them on Wall Street or with any of a number of legal or accounting firms.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Isn't this traditionally the kind of event where any Japanese man with any amount of self-respect commits Hara-Kiri instead of pointing fingers at each other?
Just wondering.
Remember folks. When you lie, cheat, and steal for 1.2 billion dollars, we will talk about all the pressures you are under and force you to resign in disgrace. If you rob $100 from the cash register at quickie-mart when the cashier isn't looking, we'll talk about how you're the scourge of society and put you away for 20 years.
How much of this was due to weakness in the PC market? Declining shipments have hurt the industry as a whole, and I imagine Toshiba is largely dependent on sales of laptops. Someone I spoke to suggested they didn't believe Lenovo's numbers for the past couple years. Anyone have any knowledge or insight into Toshiba's financials? I'm wondering if this is more than greedy executive leadership, maybe more a canary in the coal mine for the industry as a whole.
And then a million people (men, women, children, civilians all) died when the only atomic weapons used in combat were dropped on them. I'd say that balances out Pearl Harbor a bit. I don't think they "got away" with anything.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
Not read the report in enough detail and I'm not a financials guy.
But GE, Microsoft, any number of companies in the 90s and early 2000s engaged in 'backing in' -- tweaking their earnings to meet expectations by borrowing from the next quarter; that is, delaying the reporting of losses.
How much of what Toshiba is doing is worse than that?
Lie the equivalent of $1,200 and you go to prison, lie about $1,200,000,000 and you get to resign with your golden parachute. It's all about scale.
You are just not going to outdo the Americans. And resign? Please! Here you get promoted, might even become president of the country, and the job will be waiting for you when you finish your term/sentence..
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
GE had a long history of "managed earnings", where quarterly earnings would magically beat the targets by a few percent. They were finally busted by the SEC in 2009, but the practice is known to have gone on much earlier, when Jack Welch was running the company.
This just happened at Olympus a few years ago. They're still mad that some non-Japanese guy told the public their accounting numbers were bogus. Kicked his ass out of the country.
is basically just massive scale tax avoidance procured by hiring ex ministers who work for big accountancy firms.
these people should be imprisoned for life and all their assets impounded but instead they just resign and get lucrative consultancies do the same thing elsewhere
[site]
Yep, those civilians were totally to blame for Pearl Harbor. They deserved to die.
Good job, America.
No sig today...
One need only recall Kurosawa's "The Bad Sleep Well" (1960) to note that nothing really has changed.
And then a million people (men, women, children, civilians all) died when the only atomic weapons used in combat were dropped on them. I'd say that balances out Pearl Harbor a bit. I don't think they "got away" with anything.
First, your death count is wrong-- it's high by roughly a factor of five. Second, the deaths from the nuclear weapons were small compared to the deaths from conventional bombings. War kills people. If you're complaining about bombing, complain about that. Third, the estimated death count from the nuclear weapons was about equal to the death rate from five weeks of the war: if the bombing shortened the war by five weeks, it saved lives. Fourth, the Japanese put every man they had into the war effort-- even the farmers. If they war hadn't ended, the number of Japanese starving would have been millions: there was not enough manpower in the form of women and children left to harvest the fields.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Well, this is why investing is so risky. You really do not know as a typical investor what is happening within a company. I think this goes on more then we know about. Just because so many times I see earnings reports and think this is out of skew with what is occurring in reality.
While they were and are highly diversified, as is the custom for zaibatsu/kereitsu, I am not aware that Toshiba made warplanes, or any kind of planes. Others, of course, did, and some still exist, like Mitsubishi. If you can point to some evidence that Toshiba ever made planes, I'd be obliged.
Well, it's more complicated than that. There were military targets in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Consider the alternative, though: We now know that Japan was going to basically fight to the last man if we invaded, they were projecting losses of up to 20,000,000 people. You could argue that we saved 19,000,000 lives by dropping the bomb. It doesn't make it less reprehensible, but it's a factor that should be considered.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
You're quite correct about the casualty numbers. I stand corrected.
And I'm not arguing with you about the justification for using the bomb. In another comment I lay out basically the same theory. It's reprehensible in a vacuum, but considering the circumstances, it's at least defensible.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
this?
Best Slashdot Co
Certainly. Other factors to be considered would be regional commander's documented willingness to drop nuclear bombs on other countries to "combat communism", which most certainly wasn't about "saving 19.000.000 lives".
Well, it's more complicated than that. There were military targets in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Consider the alternative, though: We now know that Japan was going to basically fight to the last man if we invaded, they were projecting losses of up to 20,000,000 people. You could argue that we saved 19,000,000 lives by dropping the bomb. It doesn't make it less reprehensible, but it's a factor that should be considered.
Doesn't it make it less reprehensible? I know that since we cannot know exactly what would have transpired otherwise, it's hard to say if it was a "good decision." But it seems reprehensible is the wrong word.
Dark Reflection
Killing thousands (mostly civilians) is always reprehensible, but you're right that there are probably degrees to it.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
My company had been talking to them about buying several thousand tablets running Android, on to which we would load a custom application. When we went back last year to talk seriously about the terms, they revealed they had signed some deal with Microsoft, to sell only Windows tablets. At the last minute they offered up some half hearted Android solution, but it was too late. I speculate they were unhappy with the thin tablet profit margins, and trying to justify charging premium prices by advertising MS features as premium. The irony is, this is the second company I have worked for that decided to spend the money and effort to move away from a Windows or CE OS, to an Android OS.
What happened on Okinawa between April and June of 1945 was a foreshadowing of what would have happened if the main island of Japan was invaded. Hirohito thought the allies wouldn't dare invade the main island because of the losses they would suffer; he didn't care about Japanese losses. When the atomic bombs were dropped he realized that the Allies could crush him without significant losses. That ended WWII.
"Yep, those civilians were totally to blame for Pearl Harbor. They deserved to die."
Others have spoken to the military targets near, and what other options there were, and I think to the point that the nuclear bombs did not cause the most casualties, and are only the most memorable.
But, further,
A, the guys at Pearl Harbor, and all the other places people died in the early stages of the war,
were they responsible for the issues that made Japan feel like an attack was a good idea?
Did they deserve to die? Did they deserve to die as they did? ( read about the Bataan death march, among other atrocities )
( noted that this does not make the civilians in Japan deserving of death, particularly )
B, how else would you have proceeded in the political leadership of America's place?
What do you think they should have done instead?
A bit of a rhetorical question, but seriously posed.
If you think about responding with "negotiate", i'm going to suggest more reading/research on your part.
Civilians jumped off cliffs during the invasion of Okinawa.
Japanese soldiers were still found on Pacific islands, waiting for the return of the victorious Japanese on into the 1970's
( my point being how fanatical some could be coming out of that society )
emt 377 emt 4
You mean the same civilians that chose to keep the same government in power that authorized Pearl Harbor?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
Hirohito may not have even wanted to go to war. It's hard to say with a society that deifies their leadership and destroyed a lot of evidence on the way out.
So? "Regional Commanders" have never had the means or authority to do anything nuclear, so their "willingness" means fuckall.
No argument there, but that's fraud not embezzlement.
Nothing wrong with deferring losses to next year. Viz. You get your American tax refund a year after you've paid your taxes.
Hey, if it's good for the government...
I don't think you do go to prison for claiming to have made $1200 more than you really did. At least not typically.
As an American, did they get the money back?
These 8 should be bankrupt and living on the street.
Take the money! That would do more to stop this, than shooting an old man.
The nature of who has been considered acceptable to kill or otherwise victimize in war has vacillated throughout human history. The concept that civilians and other non-combatants are supposed to be left alone when they aren't involved with military targets is a fairly new one, and at times the definition of winning the conflict was the complete annhilation of one's opponent to the last person so that they could never pose a threat again. Even in modern times it's still up for debate- is it acceptable to bomb a civilian population that surrounds and works for a factory that produced war materiel? Does it matter if they produce things as mundane as boots or uniform buttons or velcro, as opposed to producing rifles or tanks or APCs?
Japan had a lot of cottage-industry into WWII. A lot of war materiel was produced in homes or in neighborhoods. If the means of production for an enemy force is subject to attack (we sure felt it was, look at the efforts to conceal aircraft manufacturing facilities on the west coast!) then bombing neighborhoods that produce uniforms or canteens or the sticks to which grenades are attached is fair game.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Same as always.... Kill someone and you`re a killer.... kill 100000 and you`re a conqueror...
I can't call that English
I really don't know where Japan is heading. Although it has little foreign debt the government is heavily in monetary debt to the people. The future is bleak.
Not resignment, retirement.
Yep, those civilians were totally to blame for Pearl Harbor. They deserved to die.
Just like those idiots in the World Trade Center. Damn fools just HAD to go to work that day.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Except that they did. Consult relevant history.
Niched is not a Japanese name. His name is Atsutoshi Nishida.