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In 2007 Ishikawa Harima Industries (IHI) experienced large profit overstatements (and subsequent downward revisions) caused by overly-optimistic estimates used in percentage-of-completion accounting for large projects. At the bottom of the link below, you can see IHI’s explanation of the incident, and the actions it took for years afterwards in order to improve its internal controls and accounting:
http://www.ihi.co.jp/csr/english/2011/management/governance.html
I recently spoke to directors and officers about oversight of risk management by boards of directors. I prepared a list of 25 reasons that risk management failure happens, based on my experience assisting boards, including boards that have failed and boards that cannot afford to fail. Almost all of what follows below is based on real examples. I have never encountered a risk management failure where the board was not at fault, based on what the board said or did, or failed to say or do.
Here are 25 reasons for risk management failure:
The global discussion about gender diversity on public company boards continues. Despite practices in several countries like the adoption of quotas, and significant efforts undertaken by a number of organizations in the US to increase gender diversity of directors, the number of women serving as directors has not changed significantly over the last six years. (18% of all S&P 500 directors are now female compared to 16% in 20081.
BDTI’s Representative Director Nicholas Benes is quoted in his article about Sharp in the Financial Times this morning. Excerpts:
Sharp, a century old stalwart of corporate Japan, has unveiled an annual loss of $1.9bn and warned of “material uncertainty” about its ability to stay in business, less than three years after facing a similar crisis of survival.
Even for a company with Wal-mart’s heft, $800 million is a sizable sum. That is what the giant retailer will have spent by the end of this fiscal year on its internal probe into alleged bribing of Mexican officials, into whether subsidiaries elsewhere may have been greasing palms and on related compliance improvements.
Matthews Asia is seeking to profit from profound change in Japan with the launch of a new fund.
The Matthews Japan fund, run by Kenichi Amaki, has the flexibility to invest across the whole market cap spectrum in Japan, particularly companies that can benefit from improvements in corporate governance and the domestic growth outlook.
The strategy will replicate that of the existing Matthews Japan fund, which has been available in the US since 1998.
Billionaire Dan Loeb, whose Third Point hedge fund holds a stake in Yamanashi-based Fanuc Corp., said he has met with Japanese officials and expects that he’ll find more ways to spend money in the nation.