Olympus: The biggest Japanese Fraud in History Olympus corporation history: Olympus was established in 1919 by Mr. Takeshi Yamashita. His initial goal with Olympus was to launch production of microscopes in Japan. The Olympus corparation is a camera and medical equipment producer. Its headquarters are in Tokyo, Japan and its current CEO is Shuichi Takayama. This corporation was the first to use industrial techniques to produce microscopes, in Japan. The name Olympus comes from Mont. Olympus, which is the home of 12 Greek gods. It symbolises ambition to create high quality products. The company has gone through several names changes. Its initial name was Establishment of Takachiho Seisakusho by Takeshi Yamashita. In 1942 it was renamed Takachiho Optical Corporation, in 1949 Olympus Optical Corporation and finally Olympus corporation in 2003. As stated earlier, its first product was a microscope called Asahi 600x. In 1936, Olympus manufactured its first camera called the Semi-Olympus 1. In 1950, it introduced the company's first gastro camera. In 1964, Olympus expanded in Germany and in 1968 it founded its branch in the United-States of America. The American branch main goal was to market medical products and microscopes. In the same year, the company expanded in the endoscopes industry. In 1971, Olympus expanded in the clinical analyse industry. In 2011, Olympus accounting scandal broke and its stock price plummeted but, it still stayed in operations. Olympus corporation is listed on the Tokyo stock exchange and its stock price at the end of mars 28th, 2014 was ¥3,345. The Olympus Fraud: When a company feels that there is no way to survive its current situation and when the losses are greater than the profits, some people may bel... ... middle of paper ... ...that there is no collusion between the fraud and external auditors. 9. Internal Auditing Department Olympus should have an auditing department that insures that all the written accounting procedures are correctly followed and implements controls to insure a company fraud-free. The auditors should insure that monthly bank reconciliations are properly done, and produce each time that there is an acquisition certifying that this one is legitimate (among other tasks). 10. Establish a Transparency Policy Olympus should establish a transparency policy giving access to all the stakeholders to the financial reports and letting them know about all the acquisitions and future plans. This will make the company more participatory and more transparent to the eyes of the stakeholders, which will probably increase the number of investors. This in addition, will let other people
...o rational decisions being made. Eventually, the team experience huge financial losses (Thaler & Sunstein, 2003).
The case study, `Will GM 's Strategic Plan Lead to Success,` is about how the company General Motors Co. Plans to overcome financial deficits, ensure growth within the company, and remain competitive in the automotive industry. To help with overcoming financial deficits, GM was apart of the bailout, which assisted GM in relieving themselves of almost $40 billion dollars of debt. This restructuring gave GM an advantage over other automakers. Most other automotive businesses, that did not participate in the bailout, still have billions of dollars of debt they must repay in addition to competing with its adversaries.(Kinicki & Williams, 2013). GM made many cutbacks to ensure growth within the company. The reduced the amount models that are in production. They have recognized that some changes need to be implemented with global production in order to remain ahead.
Harvard Business School case 274-116. Cooper Industries, Inc. Retrieved on August 31, 2008, from University of Phoenix, Resource, FIN/545 web site: https://mycampus.phoenix.edu/secure/resource/resource
The major downfall and/or reorganization of companies have cost: lost securities, downsized or vacancies in employment, lost or minimized retirements, and assisted in the economic recession. The following companies have been involved in varying experiences that led to financial improprieties and unethical decisions.
Many people believe that in order to succeed in a business that is having difficulties, it is important to focus on a particular area in order to be better productive in each of them, and be able to reach the goal. Instead, Goldratt and Jonah demonstrates that is important to focus on the company as a whole, but at the same time, it shows that it is incorrectly to only focus in an specific manufacturing department, or one plant, or a department within the plant, because people should not be concerned in local optimums.
Through out his tenure at Sunbeam,Al Dunlap’s advocated profit by firing many employees and shutting down many factories.If we look at it in the short term ,this approach seems very attractive as it brings in quick short term gains.In the long term ,however, such a decision would not ensure the sustainability of the company. Profitability and responsibility can and should be combined in an ideal world, however it is clear that they are at least partially contradictory. Shareholder pressure should not force a company to make short-term decisions that might be detrimental to the long-term profitability of the company.
The Body Shop International case is an interesting case study into the miscommunication of owners and stockholder interests with regard to financial conditions. Anita Roddick, the founder of The Body Shop had no financial experience and thought that all she needed to do was expand her business and the financing would take shape as she developed her business. While Anita’s product concept of a natural skin-care line was good; her lack of experience in financial matters took its toll on her business.
...strategy when the initial downsizing failed to take them out of the red or gain back lost market share.
...re similar to a failing business: both doing whatever it takes to stay in business but fail in the long-run.
Jan has recently learned that her company has been bought by another company. Within a month, she and her coworkers will learn who among them will be hired by the new company and who will lose their jobs. Overnight their sense of security has been shattered. They are experiencing apprehension and frustration. They feel that they have lost control over their lives. They complain and disengage from activity. "If the company doesn’t care about me, why should I care about it? What’s the point of working when I’m probably going to lose my job anyway?"
Management accountants use their skills to help with decisions that help a business make good decisions so they company will be valuable and in an ethical manner. They assess risk and implement strategy through planning, budgeting, and forecasting. Now managerial accounts have become critical with their analysis while managing a business. They do more than provide financial information they also have an active role in the business. Over the years managerial accountants has changed and now provide nonfinancial information. They can help a business achieve their goals. Today there is many things that is influencing how managerial accountants do their job with the emergence of e-business. They can use their knowledge to streamline the e-business (Hilton,2008). Now global competition has new challenges for managerial accounts because trade agreements can affect the way the business performs abroad. Gillet (n.d) said, “To be competitive, manufacturers must keep up
Within Adelphia, there were assessments in regards to the company being over-leveraged. While knowing this, the Rigas family continued to work together and cover their tracks “to conceal the borrowings and inflate earnings” (Markon and Frank); rather than combating such issue of leveraging resulting in the fall of stock prices from the recession- in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Additionally, it seemed that employees and management of the company were ignorant to the fact of Adelphia being susceptible to such fraud. While many employees continued to add on to the fraud that the Rigas were committing, management did nothing to be able to stop such activity. They did not consider such activity or have controls set in place to detect such
Organizations that only have top management as the board members are more susceptible to accounting malpractices. Members of the board should preferably own shares in the company to ensure diligence when it comes to the interests of the company. Apart from the Board of Governors, there should also be an audit committee in place to oversee the financial dealings of the bank. Members of the board and the audit committee should have basic financial knowledge. Some of the members should also be experts in finances so that they can detect any anomaly that may take place in terms of financial reporting. An overhaul of the regulatory framework is required to empower authorities to intervene immediately, and make improvements. New technology is required. Manual antiquated processes should be eliminated because this causes greater human error and poor
The article raises the issue of revenue growth stalls that affect even the most successful companies. The article focuses on four major causes of the crisis. The first cause is the premium-position captivity that is”the inability of a firm to respond effectively to new, low-cost competitive challenge or to a significant shift in customer valuation of product features” (p.54). The second reason is the innovation management breakdown that is”some chronic problem in managing the internal business process for updating existing product and services and creating new one” (p.56). Third reason is the premature core abandonment that means “the failure to fully exploit growth opportunities in the existing core business” and “acquisitions of growth initiatives in areas relatively distant from existing customers, products, and channels”(p.56). Finally, the fourth cause is the talent bench shortfall that is “a lack of leaders and staff with the skills and capabilities required for strategy execution” (p.58). Authors emphasize that these causes are mainly within management control since they result from “a choice about strategy or organizational design” (p.54).
Never have I ever climbed a mountain peak. As a child, I imagined myself conducting expeditions in deep-frozen pathways, leading amateur explorers to the top of the world, and instructing rookies in surviving harsh blizzards. Even though slightly altered, my childhood dream has been achieved. I led a team of fellow classmates, in my Strategic Management course, to the success summit of a financial competition. Over the course of a semester, I and my teammates were supposed to create and manage a company of the IT industry, in a computer-simulated environment, along with other four rival teams. I dealt with strategy and financial matters of our virtual enterprise, while my colleagues were working on marketing and manufacturing. During the four months of the exercise, I have experienced finance from various aspects: capital budgeting, through selecting favorable investment for upcoming quarters; debt management, by assessing the necessary amount and efficiency of loans; profitability analysis and dividend policy, which had been used to compile the company’s general performance index. Working in a multinational team, which included an American, a Norwegian and a Moldovan, strengthen my negotiations skills, as well as flexibility and cooperation. But above all, this experience intensified my passion for finance. Of course, a pleasant bonus was the fact that, in the end, our company’s financial performance was six times the performance of second-best team.