Japanese industrial giant Toshiba is attempting to recover from its third major corporate governance scandal in six years — and this time the nation

Toshiba engulfed by scandal again — and the prime minister is implicated

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2021-06-21 10:30:06

Japanese industrial giant Toshiba is attempting to recover from its third major corporate governance scandal in six years — and this time the nation's prime minister is alleged to have played a part.

Toshiba’s first big mess was the 2015 accountancy scandal in which it admitted to over-stating revenue by $1.2 billion. Next came a mess at Toshiba’s US-based nuclear power plant business, which went so far over budget on some projects that the company had to sell its NAND flash chip joint venture with Western Digital to raise desperately needed cash.

Those two messes saw Toshiba pledge to improve its corporate governance. Ahead of the company’s 2020 annual general meeting, activist investors sought to accelerate that change by proposing the election of new officers untainted by the company’s troubles.

That effort failed, and one of the activist investors — Singaporean fund management company Effissimo capital management — smelled a rat. It sought to investigate what it thought were irregularities in the way the meeting was conducted.