You can see three (very similar) Woodford interviews made at Financial Times (recommended!), Bloomberg (on youtube) and Channel4 (on their website). Mr Woodford said that he sent a report to the Serious Fraud Office in the UK. That’s going to be a tuff and long battle. Meanwhile the shares are losing another 8% today (Source: Bloomberg).

What you see on top is a screenshot taken a couple of minutes ago (14:00 London time). It shows the market reaction after the latest ex CEO Woddofrd statement at Bloomberg: “The whole board is contaminated and that company needs to be cleaned up. The whole board have had discussions and vote unanimously and no one asks anything. It’s just complete and utter obedience to Kikukawa.” And “There were $800 million in payments to buy companies making face cream and Tupperware. What the hell were we doing paying $800 million for these companies?”. And there is more coming from W.: “The eventual cost of the Transaction to Olympus is extremely significant and is as a result of a number of actions taken by management which are questionable and which give cause for concern. We were unable to confirm that there has been improper conduct, however, given the sums of money involved and some of the unusual decisions that have been made it cannot be ruled out.” The end of MR.W interview sounds a bit dramatic: “I was extremely concerned for my safety and well-being, left Japan on the first available flight to London via Hong Kong on Friday afternoon.”

What I didn’t know until today is that Woodford recommended Kikukawa and Mori resign from the board in an Oct. 11 letter!!! And only three days later Woodford was fired.

No matter who is right, the market believes in Mr. Woodford story. Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Nomura Holdings Inc. cut Olympus’s ratings after the ouster. Something has to change inside Olympus, because many out there are not trusting them anymore!

Olympus shares dropped by 17,61% after the recent CEO dismissal (Soruce: Bloomberg).

Ex Olympus CEO Mr. Woodford has been interviewed by the Financial Times (Click here) and what you read is really giving you an idea of how bad things are ongoing at Olympus. Woodford checked the past acquisition strategy from Olympus and discovered that “large amounts of money seemed to have “disappeared” into the hands of poorly vetted outside financial advisers and investment vehicles.” and “a catalogue of calamitous errors and exceptionally poor judgment which … has resulted in the destruction of shareholder value of $1.3bn“.
And how did Olympus react? They told them to “to catch a bus to the airport“.

Editor’s note: I am not “for” nor “against” Mr Woodford. I am only reporting what he told about Olympus. And it is really not a good news!

Back in April 2011 for the first time in Olympus history a non Japanese citizen became Olympus CEO. But after 6 months only the (british) Michael Woodford had been dismissed because of “boardroom and management conflicts“. (Source: Boston.com). The Olympus board appointed Chairman Tsuyoshi Kikukawa as new CEO. It is an unexpected news and Olympus shares plunged more than 14 percent to 2,123 yen ($27.60) on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The new CEO Kikukawa said that “He (M.Woodford) could not overcome the cultural barrier of Japan and Japanese companies“.

Analysis: What does it mean for Olympus? From what I read on newspapers and from what I know from my sources Michael Woodford is a very competent manager that has been able to improve the Olympus Europa Holding GmBH profits by cost cutting and restructuring. And my guess is that his restructuring plans were to much “advanced” or “revolutionary” for the traditionally very conservative Japanese company mindset. Is that good or bad news? I guess Michael Woodford would have gone rid of  the digital camera business if it keeps to loose money like it did in the last years. And that’s something that will probably go against Olympus history and tradition. What will happen now? That news increases the chance that Olympus will keep the digital camera business alive, but the risk is that the board will not take some serious decisions to increase the profitability of that business.

And here is the official Olympus statement about the recent event (Source Olympus Global):
“Michael C. Woodford has largely diverted from the rest of the management team in regard to the management direction and method, and it is now causing problems for decision making by the management team.
Hence, judging that realisation of the 2010 Corporate Strategic Plan with its slogan of “Advancing to the Next Stage of Globalisation” would be difficult to achieve by the management team led by Woodford, all the board directors attending today, except for Woodford himself who could not participate in the voting due to special interest, unanimously resolved the dismissal from his office of the representative director, President and Chief Executive Officer (dismissal from the office of the representative director, President and Chief Executive Officer and stays as director without executing right.) Along with this, it was also resolved that the representative director, Chairman Tsuyoshi Kikukawa double as the representative director, President and Chief Executive Officer.
Global management that Olympus aims is to implement management rules, information management and operation that are common throughout the world in order to establish a business infrastructure that is more efficient and quick to respond while making the most of a Japanese style management that sets a high value on people, technology and pride of monozukuri or manufacturing. To this end, all our employees will head for the same direction as we will urgently start establishing a new structure to go towards the same goal with the entire staff as one.“

Driftwood 176mbit GOP1 GH2VK from Perry Wilson on Vimeo.

The GH2 hacking improvements are now reaching new dimensions! Thanks to the latest contribute from “Driftwood” user (check here at personal-view) the Gh2 can now record AVCHD Intra at 176Mbit. As EosHD writes: “This is a codec that uses i-frames only unlike consumer AVCHD. Every frame from the sensor is stored. Standard AVCHD is a Long-GOP compression format and works by estimating and guessing at frames in-between ‘real’ images but Intra doesn’t.” That’s really the best video quality you can get from any DSLR or Mirrorless camera and the amazing thing is that the GH2 tri core has the power to manage all that data! It really shows how good the [shoplink 16254]Panasonic GH2[/shoplink] hardware is! The video on top can be downloaded at http://vimeo.com/29763704 to see the full quality potential fo the new coding!

One more thing. The Gh2 price is dropping slowly in US and Europe. So you may take your chance! Check: [shopcountry 16254].

P.S.: The new G3 and GF3 1.2 firmware is now available: http://panasonic.jp/support/global/cs/dsc/download/fts/index2.html (it fixes an issue with the X lens support).

Fujiguys tweeted (found via Noisycamera) that they will not join the m43 for now. Just read the screenshot on top :(

This doesn’t mean that Fuji will never join m43 as the new X system is clearly targeted for the “premium” high-end market with a larger sized sensor (fullframe?). But I will bury my hopes for now. Now it’s up to Panasonic and Olympus to invent something as exciting as the Fuji announcement! Will Olympus-Panasonic ever create a new larger sensor system? I would welcome that and you?