Olympus Shares Rise After Kyodo Reports Panasonic to Invest

Olympus Corp. (7733), the camera maker that admitted to a $1.7 billion accounting fraud, rose to its highest in more than a month after Kyodo news agency reported Panasonic Corp. (6752) will invest in the company.

The shares gained as much as 3.5 percent to 1,378 yen before trading at 1,338 yen, the highest since March 30, at the close in Tokyo. Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 Stock Average gained 1.8 percent.

Panasonic is in talks to invest between 30 billion yen ($380 million) and 50 billion yen in Tokyo-based Olympus and become the largest shareholder, the Kyodo reported today, without citing anyone. The world’s biggest maker of endoscopes has said it may shore up capital after writing down the value of assets last year because of the fraud.

“We’re not the source of information for the report,” Tsuyoshi Oshima, a spokesman for Olympus, said by phone. Atsushi Hinoki, a spokesman for Panasonic, said the Osaka-based company isn’t the source of the information.

Olympus will probably post net income of about 5 billion yen or 10 billion yen in the fiscal year started in April, the Nikkei newspaper reported today, without saying where it got the information. That compares with the 25 billion yen average of four analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Olympus posted a loss of 49 billion yen last year.

Olympus is “considering” moves to raise its capital ratio, President Hiroyuki Sasa told reporters May 10. The company had a capital ratio of 4.6 percent as of March 31, it said then.

To contact the reporter on this story: Mariko Yasu in Tokyo at myasu@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Anand Krishnamoorthy at anandk@bloomberg.net

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Olympus Shares Rise After Kyodo Reports Panasonic to Invest

Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg

Panasonic is in talks to invest between 30 billion yen ($381 million) and 50 billion yen in Tokyo-based Olympus and become the largest shareholder, the Kyodo reported today.

Panasonic is in talks to invest between 30 billion yen ($381 million) and 50 billion yen in Tokyo-based Olympus and become the largest shareholder, the Kyodo reported today. Photographer: Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg

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April 20 (Bloomberg) -- Jamie Allen, Hong Kong-based secretary general of the Asian Corporate Governance Association, talks about Olympus Corp.'s accounting scandal and its implications for corporate governance in Japan and other Asian nations. Olympus Corp. shareholders are being asked to vote on new management and let the company put behind it an accounting fraud that wiped $4.2 billion off its market value and sparked criminal probes in Japan and overseas. At an extraordinary meeting today, the camera maker will seek approval to appoint 11 new directors. Allen speaks with Susan Li on Bloomberg Television's "First Up." (Source: Bloomberg)