Sharp’s smartphone camera lens biz Kantatsu blurred its finances, invented deals worth $84m Foxconn-owned Sharp has re-issued recent financial results after it found that its subsidiary Kantatsu cooked the books. Kantatsu makes lenses for smartphone cameras and is known to have Apple and Huawei among its customers. But from 2018 onwards the company did dodgy things like booking sales as complete even though the …
More like pressured to make the finances look "good" before the pending flotation.
It's a safe bet that pressure came from board-level, but probably all verbal so no paper trail.
Expect some minions to take the bullet for whichever execs and directors thought bullshitting your finances to the tune of $84M was a good idea.
Correct me if I'm mistaken but I seem to recall that Sharp ended up owned by Foxconn after exec naughtiness (not JUST the antitrust stuff) that Foxconn noticed and as a result took over 1/3 OFF the final sale price:
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2016/03/29/commentary/japan-commentary/how-sharp-is-denting-the-japan-brand/
"Rather than go with what essentially would’ve been additional public assistance through Innovation Network Corporation of Japan, Sharp went with the Taiwanese electronics assembly giant. Then Sharp pulled a maneuver more in keeping with 1986 than 2016: an 11th hour disclosure of $3 billion-plus of contingent liabilities that’s delayed the deal’s completion for over a month."
https://www.economist.com/business/2016/01/30/coming-clean
https://money.cnn.com/2017/05/04/technology/japanese-companies-fall-toshiba-olympus-sanyo-sharp/index.html
https://money.cnn.com/2016/03/30/technology/foxconn-sharp-takeover-taiwan-japan/
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