As the Toshiba scandal unfolded in 2008, Olympus were also being revealed to have over stated profits. In 2011 this was made public, how did Japan not learn? John Gapper of the FT describes this as a deeply engrained cultural problem.
The good news is that a healthy Olympus today is worth twice as much as it was pre-2011 and therefore gives a great opportunity for investors to profit from Toshiba in the long term.
The false accounting began under Atsutoshi Nishida, the chief executive between 2005 and 2009, who still wielded power as an adviser to Toshiba until this week. In 2008, according to the panel, he heard that the firm was heading for a loss of ¥18.4 billion