Olympus Corp shareholders have filed suit against the
company in a Tokyo court seeking 19.1 billion yen in compensation over
an accounting fraud that was one of corporate Japan's biggest scandals.
The
camera and medical equipment maker said on Tuesday that 48
institutional investors and pension funds, mostly foreign investors and
pension funds including the Teachers' Retirement System of the State of
Illinois and Pioneer Asset Management SA in Luxembourg, had filed the
suit in Tokyo District Court.
"It is still unclear at this point how much this may affect our financial results," said Olympus spokesman Tsuyoshi Oshima.
Speaking
at a quarterly earnings briefing on Monday, Olympus President Hiroyuki
Sasa said the firm had accounted for potential lawsuits from
sharesholders in its outlook for the financial year to March.
The
firm lifted its annual net profit forecast to 8 billion yen from 7
billion yen, sparking a 5.9 percent rise in its share price on Tuesday.
The news of the shareholder lawsuit came after the close of Tuesday's share trading.
Shares
in Olympus sank nearly 60 percent in 2011 due to the $1.7 billion
accounting fraud, which came to light in October of that year. The
shares have recaptured some of that lost ground this year, gaining 30
percent compared with a 2 percent rise in Tokyo's benchmark Nikkei
average.
Three former Olympus executives and the company itself
pleaded guilty in a Tokyo court in September to charges related to the
scandal, which forced it to restate several years of earnings.
© Thomson Reuters 2012