奥林巴斯隐瞒损失导致股价下跌
Shares in Olympus fell as much as 30% on Tuesday after the company admitted to hiding losses on securities investments for decades.
奥林巴斯承认数十年来都在隐瞒有价证券投资的损失，导致周二其股价下跌30%。
The company said it had used funds related to past acquisitions（兼并） to cover these losses.
This is the biggest disclosure Olympus has made since former chief executive, Michael Woodford, claimed that he was fired for raising questions about them.
Olympus executive VP, Hisashi Mori, has been dismissed as a result.
Olympus president, Shuichi Takayama, is blaming former president Tsuyoshi Kikukawa, former vice president Hisashi Mori and the company's auditor Hideo Yamada for the transactions.
"I was absolutely unaware of the facts I am now explaining to you," Mr Takayama said. "The previous presentations were mistaken."
He added that the company would consider criminal charges if necessary.
Untenable position?
The controversy surrounds the payments made by Olympus to financial advisors as part of its acquisition of companies including British firm Gyrus.
The payments came to light when Mr Woodford claimed that he had been forced out of the company for raising questions about these and other accounting practices last month.
For its part, Olympus maintained that it had done nothing wrong and launched a third-party investigation into the matter.
"Through this process (of the third-party investigation), we found that from the 1990s the posting of losses on securities investments had been deferred," the company said in a statement.
The company also admitted that it had channelled money related to the acquisitions through various funds and other measures to defer posting losses.
After the company released the statement, Mr Woodford was quoted by the Reuters news agency as saying that "the position of the board and non execs（执行） is untenable now".
Keiji Isaji, an attorney with K&L Gates law firm in Tokyo added "the members of the board appear to have breached their fiduciary（信托的） duty owed to the company and to the shareholders".