Olympus CEO was suddenly dismissed and share price fell sharply

Founded in 1919, Olympus Corporation has become one of the representative companies of precision and optical technology in Japan and the world. Its business areas include medical, life science, imaging and industrial machinery. Olympus cameras also make consumers familiar with the brand. But recently the company was caught in a storm and was particularly concerned by the outside world, that is, its CEO Michael Woodford was dismissed.

Michael Woodford had been working for Olympus for thirty years and suddenly was fired to the outside world. Currently Olympus's stock market is also affected by the incident, the drop is very large, and even reached 24%. As for the sudden dismissal of the CEO, according to Kikuyuki Kikuchi, chairman of Olympus, it is because of the conflict between Michael Woodford's management style and other top executives.

Is this reason really the reason why Michael Woodford was dismissed? Or is there another insider? These are currently unknown. However, Woodford himself revealed the real reason why he was fired. He said that he was involved in investigating the company’s acquisition of nearly three billion Japanese companies in nearly $800 million from 2006 to 2008.

Olympus was reported to have purchased Humalabo Corp, a manufacturer of creams and nutritional supplements from 2006 to 2008. Medical waste recycling company AltisCo. And NewsChefInc, which produces microwaveable food packaging. . Woodford thinks that these acquisitions have too high purchase prices and consulting fees, have an impact on the company's finances, and hired an external audit firm PricewaterhouseCoopers to investigate the three acquisitions.

However, an Olympus spokesperson did not agree with Woodford's claim that all the mergers and acquisitions were conducted using a reasonable audit and were completed in a reasonable process. There was no problem. Regardless of the truth of the incident, Olympus was caught up in the storm and the stock price has been falling. Suddenly dismissing the CEO, the unclear direction of management has brought negative impact on Olympus, but also affected the direction of its stock market.