Toshiba’s headache continues after the Japanese securities watchdog recommended that it be fined a record 7.37 billion yen (£39.7m) for a massive accounting violation.
Advertisement
The firm itself is suing several former executives for damages over their alleged role in the affair.
The lawsuit against the company, as well as three former chief executives and two chief financial officers, comes as Toshiba shares hover about 40 percent lower than their value before the company questioned its accounting in early April. The commission is still considering whether to recommend penalties against former top company executives, people familiar with the matter have said.
Toshiba, in early September, restated its earnings for period from the fiscal year ending March 2009 until the third quarter of fiscal 2014, resulting in writedowns totaling 155 billion yen. “It’s important that Toshiba rebuilds its corporate structure and makes proper efforts to prevent a recurrence”.
The five are former presidents Hisao Tanaka, Norio Sasaki and Atsutoshi Nishida and former chief financial officers Fumio Muraoka and Makoto Kubo. Despite a major executive shake-up, many of those involved in the scandal remain in positions of power at the company – though it has stated they will be ‘punished’ for their actions.
“Changing CEOs doesn’t mean Toshiba has improved”, said Mitsushige Akino, executive officer at Ichiyoshi Asset Management in Tokyo, which doesn’t hold the company’s shares.
Nikkei Asia Review reported late last week that Toshiba, Fujitsu and Sony spinoff Vaio are considering a business merger of their PC operations, which would create the largest player in the Japanese market.
Toshiba hit the headlines in the worst possible way this year when the company has found to have padded profits in order to appear more closely competitive with rival Hitachi.
Advertisement
Muromachi in September pledged to prune underperforming businesses, including workforce reductions in appliances, personal computers, televisions and semiconductors.
