Olympus risks lawsuits over acquisitions ' TSE

OlympusCorporation risks possible lawsuits unless a planned probe of acquisitions at the heart of a scandal engulfing the endoscope maker is truly independent, the head of the Tokyo Stock Exchange warned on Friday.There should be no prejudice. There are laws to protect shareholders, Reuters quoted Atsushi Saito as telling a regular news conference.Olympus, he added, should avoid picking members of a panel it has promised will investigate its M&A activity who lean toward the managements position.Olympus agreed on October 21 to appoint the third-party panel to look into the deals, although it has yet to identify its members. Saito said he suggested on October 14 that it establish such a group.Executives at Olympus are struggling to convince shareholders it acted properly in paying a record $687m in advisory fees to two obscure firms related to the $2bn acquisition of British medical equipment maker Gyrus in 2008. They are also under fire for the purchase of three companies in Japan, the values of which it has since largely written down.Saito described the scandal and management decision that had spurred a sharp drop in the firms corporate value as very regrettable.Olympuss shares resumed a slide on Friday, falling 10 per cent to 1,217 yen, following a rebound Thursday after Tsuyoshi Kikukawa, the executive at the heart of the furor and architect of the ousting of Olympuss British Chief Executive Officer, Michael Woodford,two weeks earlier, resigned as chairman and president.Since the boardroom putsch against Woodford the companys market value has almost halved.In a bid to curtail margin trading, the Tokyo bourse said later in a release that it was temporarily raising the payment required for such trades, when shares are bought with money borrowed from brokers using other securities as collateral.
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