Japanese investors fail to back Woodford

Former Olympus chief executive Michael Woodford stepped up his campaign to be reinstated yesterday as battle lines were drawn between the scandal-hit firm’s Japanese and foreign investors.

Woodford, who was sacked from the top job in October for questioning crooked accounting at Olympus, is now lobbying shareholders of the cameras and medical equipment maker to replace the disgraced board with a new team that he is assembling.

The Englishman is backed by the firm’s major foreign shareholders but hit out at Japanese investors for failing to support him, after new accounts filed on Wednesday showed the $1.7 billion (£1.1bn) fraud Woodford exposed had left the company dangerously short of cash.

He said: “We saw a shameful state of the company’s finances [on Wednesday], but not one Japanese shareholder stood up and said publicly ‘Mr Woodford is right, thank you Mr Woodford’. A total and utter silence.”

Woodford also said he had discussed refinancing options for Olympus with private equity firms and investment banks, following rumours the 92-year-old firm has become a takeover target for rivals. The existing board has said it will resign but is seeking to appoint its own successors.

Yesterday Woodford launched an emotional attack on the firm’s current boss, Shuichi Takayama, one of the directors who had voted unanimously to sack him after 14 days as chief executive and 30 years with the company.

He called Takayama’s handling of the whole affair “Machiavellian”, and voiced concerns that he was planning to raise money by placing new shares with a third party. That would dilute the stakes of existing owners and weaken their hand in a proxy battle between Woodford and whoever the existing board chooses as its candidate.