Archive for October, 2011

Shady Business Scandal: Olympus Paid $687 Million to Mystery Adviser

Former Olympus CEO Michael Woodford has come forward with accusations about very shady dealings that took place at his previous employer:

He raised questions about the size of payments made by Olympus in four deals between 2006 and 2008.

Among them is the $1.92 billion acquisition of British medical-instruments company Gyrus Group and the $687 million paid to an adviser on the purchase.

The fee works out to more than a third of the total purchase price, much higher than the one or two percent normally charged.

Olympus has denied any wrongdoing and on Wednesday said its total payments to advisers included the redemption of preference shares when they became available.

It said it paid about $244 million in return for advisory work on the acquisition, including around $177 million in Gyrus preferred shares issued to the adviser. It did not release the name of the advisory firm.

But when Olympus later bought back the preferred shares, their value had risen to $620 million, the company said.

The total combined figure is almost double that quoted by chairman Tsuyoshi Kikukawa in Tuesday’s Nikkei newspaper in which he said Olympus “paid commissions of about 30 billion yen” to the advisers.

Woodford claims he was fired because he demanded that those involved with the deal explain why such a ridiculously large sum of money was paid to a mysterious fund in the Cayman Islands:

Of equal concern to Mr Woodford was the identity of the adviser, listed in the documents as Axes Americas, a US-based securities firm, and the related Axam Investments, a Cayman Islands-registered fund overseen by Axes that received the payments from Olympus.

“I felt very uncomfortable because the amount of monies paid to parties completely unknown were so huge,” said Mr Woodford in a video interview with the FT on Monday.

Neither Axes nor Axam were mentioned in public announcements related to the Gyrus deal. According to a review of the acquisition by PwC, Axam was struck from the Cayman Islands registry a few months after taking payment from Olympus, while Axes ceased operations and a man listed as its president effectively disappeared.

The FT called a telephone number for the company listed in an online business directory but found it had been disconnected.

Olympus insists that Woodford, a 30-year veteran of the company, was sacked because of a “clash of management styles.”

In a recent video interview with Bloomberg news, Woodford responded to speculation about a lawsuit from Olympus by saying that he would be “delighted” to see the issue go before a court.

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Arakawa Seal Given Honorary Residency Certificate

Ara-chan, the seal that has been hanging out in the Arakawa river since last week, has been given a special certificate of residency from the city of Shiki:

On the the residency certificate, they decided to assign the seal the last name “Shiki,” so nobody would be confused about the city in which it is living.

Note: this is just “special” residency certificate, not a real residency permit. It doesn’t have the same legal status as a real residency permit, and the animal will obviously never use it for anything.

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Japanese University Students Create Rage Comics

Reddit user and English teacher Sukosuti has taught a class of Japanese university students about the rage faces from /r/fffffffuuuuuuuuuuuu and asked them to create some original comics.

Here is my favorite:

See the rest and vote on them them at http://www.reddit.com/r/EFLcomics/!

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Seoul National University May Finally Establish A Japanese Studies Program

For the first time since its establishment in 1946, South Korea’s Seoul National University plans to have a Japanese Studies program for undergraduates:

SNU said Friday that deans of its colleges held a meeting concerning the 2012 curriculum a day earlier and decided to set up a new undergraduate studies department, named the Department of East Asian Language and Civilization Studies. It said a board of trustees’ meeting will make the final decision on the issue.

The envisioned academic unit will cover a comprehensive study of the languages, literature and culture of two countries and two regions _ Japan, India and Southeast Asia and the Middle East.

In 2012, it is expected to enroll 10 students, five each for Japanese and Southeast Asian majors. From 2013, 20 students will be recruited annually, five each for four majors. The school plans to assign around 13 professors and part-time lecturers to the new department.

Considering Japan’s geographic proximity and its economic significance, it is very odd that South Korea’s top university lacks such a program.

Why was there no program? An article in the Dong-A Ilbo argues that it is a result of anti-Japanese sentiment and a desire to ignore Japan:

The “absence of Japan” phenomenon remains in Korea. A case in point is the lack of a Japanese studies department at Seoul National University, the most prestigious and largest university in Korea. This is based on deep-rooted hostility toward Japan and the groundless perception that Korea knows Japan better than any other country. Another misconception is that Japan has nothing deserving scientific study.

Arirang News also reported a similar reason:

The university has refused to open any Japan-related courses since its establishment in 1946 due to anti-Japanese sentiment among some people in the country.

And an editorial author for the Korea Times seems to think so too, and blaming the situation on Korea’s “combination of strong antipathy and an inferiority complex” towards Japan:

Many Japanese people might have felt hurt but laughed inside at Koreans’ naïve emotionalism. So it is welcome, albeit quite belated, that Seoul National University (SNU) has decided to set up a Japanese studies department for the first time in its 65-year history.

Of course, many private universities, and 17 of the 43 national and public institutions, have long set up such departments. That cannot hide the significance of SNU’s decision, which indicates the nation’s top school, which was Gyeongseong (Seoul) Imperial University in colonial days ― and Korean people ― have overcome much of the complex.

One may not have to quote here what the ancient Chinese strategist, Sun Tsu, said in his “Art of War”: “If you know your enemy and yourself, you will not fall into danger in any battle you fight.” Korea no longer regards Japan as an enemy. If one replaces the battle with today’s diplomatic and economic war, however, this advice still holds good.

The editorial praises the move as, and “important first step toward more correct understanding of the seemingly well-known but actually hardly-known neighbor.”

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iPhone 4s Siri vs. Japanese English

A couple videos of Japanese people trying to use Siri, a program for the iPhone 4s that is supposed to recognize spoken English:

Neither video uploader claims to be a master of English. Siri cannot understand them.

But don’t let these videos convince you that Siri absolutely cannot understand Japanese accents. Here’s a video of a Japanese guy who has a better command of the English language, and he apparently has no trouble getting his phone to understand what he’s saying:

[hat tip to Shii]

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Superdry: Popular UK Fashion Brand Uses Gibberish Japanese

A Japanese TV news program reports about Superdry, an extremely popular fashion brand in the UK:

The company’s logo and all of its shirts contain Japanese words and phrases that don’t make any sense. It’s gibberish. They are obviously not the work of somebody who knows how to speak Japanese.

The company is proud to show off the source of its embarrassingly terrible Japanese. They use machine translation:

Despite making boatloads of money, they just don’t care enough to hire a Japanese speaker. The gibberish that the translation software spits out looks “cool” enough. Customers are either ignorant of the bad Japanese, or don’t seem to mind. Some people are even under the mistaken impression that it is actually a Japanese brand.

The head of the company compares the pseudo-Japanese on his products to the English seen on t-shirts in Japan.

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