[1]Scandal-hit Olympus was expected to release its overdue earnings statement on Wednesday, as the camera and medical equipment maker raced to meet a deadline or risk being axed from Tokyo's stock exchange.
The company, which has been embroiled in a cover-up scandal, has said it is aiming to meet the deadline amid reports that its auditors were nervous about signing off on the accounts.
Olympus can be chopped from Tokyo's bourse if its fails to give an update on the state of its balance sheet. The company has already said it would correct the past five years of earnings.
The Nikkei business daily reported on Wednesday that the two auditing firms handling Olympus' accounts were expected to approve its financial statements.
On Tuesday, the company's ousted chief Michael Woodford returned to Japan to meet shareholders and lawmakers to discuss Japan's corporate governance, which has suffered a severe bruising after the firm's admission that it orchestrated a massive scam to conceal losses for more than a decade.
The Briton on Wednesday appeared to take a more conciliatory stance toward Olympus management, saying he wanted to avoid a so-called proxy war to win shareholder support for sacking its current executives.
Woodford had vowed the showdown after quitting Olympus' board earlier this month. "I would have no part, no part in either selling Olympus or breaking up Olympus," he said at a parliamentary hearing in Tokyo on Wednesday.
"It has to stay a Japanese company on the (Tokyo stock exchange). "I want to try to avoid a proxy fight. That would be destructive, that would be unhelpful," he added.
Woodford, the first ever non-Japanese president and chief executive of Olympus, was stripped of his executive posts after he alleged the 92-year-old firm had overpaid in acquisition deals and raised concerns over serious governance problems.
On Wednesday, Woodford said he has reached out to current Olympus president Shuichi Takayama to have 'cooperative dialogue' with a view to repopulating the embattled firm's board over the next six to eight weeks.
"That would be the constructive way to move forward, that would be a very Japanese way of moving forward," he said.
Takayama pledged last week that the firm's executives would be replaced 'at an appropriate time... after they pave a way forward to rebuild the company'.
His comments came after a committee of outside lawyers and an accountant -- all chosen by Olympus -- concluded that former company president Tsuyoshi Kikukawa and his predecessor Masatoshi Kishimoto approved the cover-up.
The stinging report described top management as 'rotten' and 'contaminated', saying they hid at least 134.9 billion yen ($1.73 billion) in losses.
Citing official land registry data, Kyodo News said Wednesday the disgraced Kikukawa, 70, transferred ownership of two condominiums to an 'apparent relative' last month, a move that was 'probably' aimed at keeping them from being sold to settle any lawsuits against Olympus management.
Shares in Olympus, which is facing several legal and regulatory investigations as well as a class-action lawsuit filed by a US investor, are worth about half their value before Woodford's ouster.
The volatile stock was off 14 per cent at 1,184 yen in early afternoon trade on Wednesday.
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