business

Head of Japan stock exchange group 'ashamed ' over Toshiba accounting scandal

9 Comments
By ELAINE KURTENBACH

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9 Comments
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Isn't there a law that has been broken? What is the penalty for breaking the law? If there is no law or no penalty then why not? These are the real questions. All we have here are some vague senses of shame and some vague hopes. Perhaps some day in a largely scripted and choreographed display we will see someone from Toshiba bow to someone else and the message will be that they were punished, though in fact this will not be the case.

5 ( +5 / -0 )

Someone help me. I didn't know math could be vague.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

Someone help me. I didn't know math could be vague.

In Japan everything is vague. Laws written in black and white are unenforced, unwritten laws which are culturally accepted are strictly enforced. The boss is always right, even when he is dead wrong, underlings who question the boss are always wrong, even when they are dead right. If the boss says the books are correct, accounting houses can't do much to argue otherwise, look what happened with Olympus and KPMG.

And even if a law is broken, what is the punishment? Olympus' former chairman oversaw hundreds of millions of dollars incorrectly accounted for, fired his accounting house in person for daring to question his authority, was convicted in court, and then received a suspended sentence, which is no punishment at all. Had he done the same thing in America in an American company, he would have likely spent the rest of his life in jail.

12 ( +13 / -1 )

This week, the company’s CEO, Hisao Tanaka, issued a letter to shareholders apologizing for the incident and pledging that the company including its subsidiaries would cooperate with the committee and “thoroughly heed its results and recommendations and reflect them in the company’s management and operations.”

In other words -- "We'll have a press conference witin a couple of months (most likely on a Friday) to release a politically correct report which blames no one specifically. But myself, and a couple of other directors, will take pay cuts for a few months. Then we'll all bow an appropriate depth for the cameras, and go back to work as usual -- screwing the stock holders".

5 ( +8 / -3 )

Nobody should be even REMOTELY surprised by this, Olympus was the poster child for the BIG BLACK hole that is ""accounting"" in Japan.

There are many many more cases of this non sense going on & the govt, banks, Jpn Inc are ALL complicit in all this.

This old "rule" applies"

Anything is OK unless you get caught!!!

Just imagine the shenanigans the govt & all its ministries have hidden away, actually we better not, that's definitely scary road.

As usual the decline sadly continues & we have guy who shamed...... I wonder what for, because the lies & cheating or as usual GETTING CAUGHT!?!?!

I think we all know the answer to that!

4 ( +5 / -1 )

Someone help me. I didn't know math could be vague.

@sillygirl:

Ahh, yes, but accounting isn't pure math! And the line between "cooking the books" and "managing earnings" has always been a thin/grey one in many instances.

GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) has improved in the last 20 years, both in Japan and globally, but GAAP does provide discretion to the management of companies on how things are booked and reported.

And some firms do employ aggressive but not necessarily illegal accounting practices to cast their P&L/earnings in a more positive light.

In this case, while I certainly don't know all of the details, I can certainly imagine what may have happened.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

he's basically calling a potentially criminal activity/negligence "lazyness". huh.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

And yet they still lose big money every year. lol.. Couldn't they at least cook up the figures so that it shows they don't lose any money?

-1 ( +2 / -3 )

tip of the iceburg, J inc translation of the law is thats "its only illegal if you get caught"

0 ( +0 / -0 )

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