Olympus will pay as much as 11 billion yen ($92 million) to settle two lawsuits based in a 2011 accounting scandal. This comes just as the camera and medical imaging company has been identified as one of several companies whose dirty duodenoscopes have infected some patients with antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
The settlements address claims from 86 investors, including foreign institutional investors and pension funds. They had looked to regain 37.7 billion yen in damages, according to a Reuters report.
Olympus admitted in 2011 to an accounting scandal that involved concealing $1.7 billion in investment losses going back to the 1990s. It used a series of overpriced acquisitions to help cover up the losses.
Former CEO Michael Woodford exposed the problems but was later fired for questioning Olympus' accounting, Reuters said. The company had to restate 5 years' worth of earnings results.
The company said that it had already set aside the full settlement amount.
In 2013, Olympus said it would pay $2.6 million to settle U.S. litigation over the same accounting issue with investors that bought its U.S.-listed American depositary receipts. A federal judge approved that settlement last May.
Late last week, in an effort to get past the recent scandal involving infected duodenoscopes, Olympus issued cleaning instructions for its devices in conjunction with the FDA. The problem with these kinds of endoscopes harboring dangerous bacteria even after cleaning has been ongoing for years. In recent weeks, a series of lawsuits involving several serious infections and deaths has targeted Olympus.
Now, the Los Angeles Times is reporting that a larger number of patients than previously disclosed were infected with antibiotic-resistant bacteria: 32 patients were infected with Olympus scopes at one of the sites, Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle, WA, with 11 of them dying.
- here is the Reuters story
- and here is the latest on the duodenoscope-related infections from the Los Angeles Times