Olympus was the company whose 2011 scandal revealed that its CEO had concealed investment losses for years.
The scandal became public after Olympus dismissed British executive Michael Woodford as chief executive in October 2011. Woodford had questioned unusually large payments connected with acquisitions, including the purchase of the British medical equipment maker Gyrus.
A later investigation found that Olympus had used acquisitions and advisory fees to help hide investment losses dating from the 1990s. The concealed losses were linked to Japan’s earlier asset-price collapse. Chairman Tsuyoshi Kikukawa and other executives resigned, while several people were prosecuted.
The episode is often remembered because Woodford, a recently appointed insider, challenged the company’s leadership and alerted journalists and authorities. It is separate from Toshiba’s later accounting scandal, which involved inflated profits rather than the concealment of old investment losses.