Olympus names insider as new president

TOKYO, Japan – Scandal-hit Olympus on Monday named current executive officer Hiroyuki Sasa as its new president after one of the biggest financial scandals in Japanese corporate history.

Olympus plans to hold an extraordinary general meeting on April 20, at which shareholders will be asked to approve the new 11-member management board, which includes eight people from outside the company.

The company nominated former Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. senior managing director Yasuyuki Kimoto as its next chairman and former executive officer of the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Hideaki Fujizuka as a director.

Three company insiders including Sasa, were nominated to lead the company, while six other outside directors were also appointed to the task of rebuilding the under-fire camera and medical equipment maker.

Sasa, 56, has headed marketing operations in the company’s medical business, after being engaged in the development of endoscopic instruments for many years.

For one of the two posts for standing corporate auditors, the company named a current financial screening chief of Nippon Life Insurance, one of Olympus’s top institutional shareholders.

The present board, including president Shuichi Takayama and five others who are being sued by the company over the covering up of investment losses, will step down after the EGM.

Earlier this month, Tokyo prosecutors arrested Olympus former president Tsuyoshi Kikukawa, who was named as a key player in a scheme to shift $1.7 billion of losses dating back to the 1990s from the camera-maker’s balance sheet.

The Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office also arrested former vice president Hisashi Mori, 54, former auditor Hideo Yamada, 67, as well as former brokerage house executive Akio Nakagawa, 61.