日本式的荣誉感

几周前发生在奥林巴斯(Olympus)的事情让人有些摸不着头脑。这家日本相机及医疗设备制造商的总裁、英国人迈克尔 - 伍德福德(Michael Woodford)在被解职后，披露了一些极为怪异的交易的细节。有些事极其不对劲儿，只是人们很难理解为什么奥林巴斯会花费14亿美元进行三笔极小的收购交易，却支付一笔高得荒唐的咨询费用。

最近，真相渐渐浮出水面，却也越来越令人不安。伍德福德的继任者高山修一(Shuichi Takayama)近日在东京的一场正式致歉活动中两度鞠躬。他透露，董事会在长达二十年的时间里一直想方设法隐瞒自上世纪90年代以来的投资损失。这些亏损都以收购之名被核销。

以该公司前董事长菊川刚(Tsuyoshi Kikukawa)为首的三名董事虽然受到指控，但他们依然认为自己的行为是值得尊敬的，这一点我们不难相信。他们也许认为小心翼翼地掩盖错误、不让前任们丢脸是自己的职责所在。

如果真是这样（我们仍然不知道究竟发生了什么），那他们想错了。诚实的结果应该会好很多，不管是对公司的投资者，还是对员工、审计人员甚至整个日本商业而言，都是如此。可实际情况是，他们将公司置于了一种危险而脆弱的境地，陷其他董事于不义——这些董事或者是知道事情内幕，抑或是渎职。

金融机构中也出现过类似的情况，譬如日本长期信贷银行(Long-Term Credit Bank)和山一证券(Yamaichi Securities)上世纪90年代末曾通过“tobashi”交易（即资产负债表外融资——译者注）掩盖泡沫破灭后遭受的损失。它们将受损资产按照账面价值转移到“傀儡”子公司中，以这种方式掩盖在证券和贷款方面的损失——奥林巴斯只不过成功将自己的伎俩多隐瞒了十几年。

它还让人想起银行里的“流氓”交易员，他们在出现损失后利用虚假交易和秘密账户来掩盖亏损。上世纪90年代中期，巴林银行(Barings)的流氓交易员尼克 - 李森(Nick Leeson)投资日经225股指和日本国债造成的损失金额，大致相当于奥林巴斯为上述可疑交易支付的金额。不同之处在于，此次罪魁祸首都是奥林巴斯的董事。

奥林巴斯的本能反应和流氓交易员是一样的——都认为掩盖损失而不是坦白承认，才是自我拯救的唯一方法。奥林巴斯的董事们之所以不愿及时认错、反而让事情变得更糟，日本人所具有的强烈荣誉感或许在从中作祟。

即便从目前掌握的证据上看，也足以表明这是一桩巨大的丑闻，也充分证明伍德福德的决定——曝光此事，而不是为了保住职位而保持沉默——的正确性。此等高层内部的沆瀣一气通常只是约翰 - 格里森姆(John Grisham)小说里的内容或是好莱坞讲述企业肮脏交易的影片里的情节，而不应该是董事会日常运作中的一幕。

这种不端行为将一家医疗设备业务誉满全球同时还拥有一个知名相机品牌的公司推入了险境。奥林巴斯的股价自10月中旬以来下跌了75%，其市值仅略高于35亿美元的股本总额，公司债券评级也遭下调。菊川刚曾指责伍德福德“企图破坏社会对于奥林巴斯的信任”，可实际上这样做的正是他自己。

正如安然(Enron)的垮台以及雷曼兄弟(Lehman Brothers)利用“回购105”(Repo 105)来粉饰账目所显示的，会计丑闻不只是日本才有。即便如此，奥林巴斯承认的违规行为的金额和大胆程度仍然令人惊愕。利用企业高溢价收购继而将其减记的惯用操作来达到掩盖亏损的目的，这真是一篇以公司为主题的绝妙讽刺作品——“咨询费”的设立尤其富有创意。

不过，日本国内宽松的公司治理标准使奥林巴斯轻而易举地就钻了空子，这着实令人不安。在奥林巴斯的15名董事中，有12人为公司现任或是前任高管，而设立单独的审计委员会这一安全保障措施，也由于被指控三人之一的山田秀雄(Hideo Yamada)担任该委员会负责人而失去了意义。

与此同时，奥林巴斯聘请的外部审计机构——2009年之前是毕马威(KPMG)，目前是安永(Ernst & Young)——也面临一些难以解释的质疑：它们为何让这种欺骗继续下去，为何没有发现注册于开曼群岛(Cayman Islands)的基金的真实目的——据称，奥林巴斯以往的亏损正是通过这些基金被“洗白”的。

对于日本而言，更深刻的教训在于：出现问题时如果不去承认整件事情，反而去策划一场“软着陆”，它将导致信任的丧失。当真相最终水落石出时（正如我们所看到的），不仅投资者会被吓跑，还会引发信任危机。

我在英国《金融时报》的同事吉莲 - 邰蒂(Gillian Tett)著有一本关于日本长期信贷银行倒闭的书。在这本名为《新泡沫经济》(Saving the Sun) 的书中，她讲述了该行管理者习惯于在日本央行(Bank of Japan)来人检查时将见不得人的文件藏到地下室中的水泥检修孔中。后来则更加变本加厉，他们组建了若干子公司，专门用于“容纳”不良贷款。

许多日本人对于事情的最终结果并不满意——该银行被一家以美国私人股本基金Ripplewood Holdings为首的财团收购，转变为一家西方式金融机构，并更名为新生银行(Shinsei Bank)。只是它曾经的欺骗行为令它变得脆弱不堪，正如同奥林巴斯的海外投资者目前正对其施加压力，要求做出改变。

在和谐的工作方法方面，西方世界的确可以从日本企业那里学到一些东西。不过日本公司的董事会应该密切关注高管的行为，并确保公司纪律得以落实，不管这个过程中会得罪谁。与之相反，奥林巴斯的董事们却是在庇护自身。

来一场彻底的“肃清”是必需的，同样需要的还有一个新的领导层，这个领导层能够以一种可信的方式应对诸如该公司可能被东京证交所(Tokyo Stock Exchange)退市这样的风险。菊川刚当初或许是出于好意，可撒谎是不值得尊敬的。

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Olympus’s deceit was dishonourable

The goings-on at Olympus were baffling three weeks ago. Michael Woodford, the Japanese company’s British president, was fired and then disclosed details of some very odd deals. Something was badly awry but it was hard to fathom why Olympus had wasted $1.4bn on three tiny acquisitions and a ludicrously inflated advisory fee.

Things became clearer, but even more disturbing, this week. Shuichi Takayama, Mr Woodford’s successor, bowed twice at a formal apology in Tokyo as he revealed a two decade-long effort inside the boardroom to conceal investment losses dating back to the 1990s. These had been written off against acquisitions.

It is still possible to believe that the accused trio of directors, headed by Tsuyoshi Kikukawa, the former chairman of the camera and medical equipment company, thought they were behaving honourably. They may have seen it as a duty to hide failure discreetly and not to make their predecessors lose face.

If so (and we still don’t know exactly what happened) they were wrong. Honesty would have been far better, not only for the company’s investors but for its employees, its auditors and for Japanese business. As it is, they left their company in a dangerously fragile condition and discredited the other directors, who either knew what was going on or failed in their duties.

The obvious parallel is with financial institutions such as Long-Term Credit Bank and Yamaichi Securities, which concealed post-bubble losses at the end of the 1990s with tobashi transactions. They hid blunder on securities and loans by transferring impaired assets to dummy subsidiaries at book value – Olympus simply managed to string out its own deception for another decade and a half.

It is also reminiscent of banks’ rogue traders who make losses and conceal them with fake transactions and hidden accounts. Nick Leeson, Barings’ rogue trader, lost about the same amount on the Nikkei 225 share index and Japanese government bonds in the mid-1990s as Olympus has paid on its dubious deals. The difference is the alleged culprits sat on Olympus’s board.

Olympus shared the rogue trader’s instinct that covering up losses rather than coming clean was the only way to save itself. Perhaps the pronounced Japanese sense of honour had the perverse effect of preventing the company’s directors from admitting error promptly, and instead making it worse.

Even on the evidence so far, it is an extraordinary scandal and it fully vindicates Mr Woodford’s decision to go public rather than to keep quiet – and keep his job. Such complicity at the top is usually the stuff of John Grisham novels or Hollywood films about nasty corporations, not daily life in the boardroom.

This misbehaviour has put at risk a company with a world-renowned medical equipment business and a distinguished camera brand. A 75 per cent fall in Olympus’s share price since mid-October has reduced its market capitalisation to little more than its equity of $3.5bn and its bonds have been downgraded. Mr Kikukawa has accused Mr Woodford of “trying to destroy society’s trust” in Olympus but he did that himself.

Accounting scandals are far from uniquely Japanese, as Enron’s collapse and Lehman Brothers’ use of “Repo 105” window-dressing showed. Still, the size and audacity of what Olympus admits to doing is breathtaking. It was a nice piece of corporate satire to conceal losses by exploiting the widespread habit of paying too much for acquisitions and writing them down – that “advisory fee” was especially creative.

But weak standards of corporate governance in Japan made it disturbingly easy for the company to do so. Twelve of the 15 company’s directors were either executives or former executives and the safeguard of having a separate audit board was overridden by the fact that Hideo Yamada, one of the accused trio, headed that body.

Meanwhile, the company’s external auditors – KPMG until 2009 and now Ernst & Young – face tricky questions over why they allowed the deception to continue and did not discover the true purpose of the Cayman Islands-registered funds through which Olympus’s old losses were allegedly laundered.

There is a broader lesson for Japan – that engineering a “soft landing” when things go wrong rather than recognising the full depth of the problem, breeds mistrust. When the truth finally emerges, as we are seeing, investors run scared and a crisis of confidence erupts.

My FT colleague, Gillian Tett, recounts in Saving the Sun, her book on the fall of LTCB, that its officials had a habit of hiding embarrassing files in a concrete manhole in the basement when the Bank of Japan carried out its inspections. That progressed to setting up subsidiaries that were used to warehouse its non-performing loans.

Many Japanese were unhappy with the outcome – that LTCB was turned into a western-style institution called Shinsei Bank by an investment group let by Ripplewood Holdings, a US private equity fund. Yet its deception made it vulnerable, just as Olympus’s international investors are now pressing for change.

Japan’s companies have something to teach the west about harmonious working practices. But their boards of directors are supposed to keep an eye on executives and ensure that disciplines apply, no matter whom it embarrasses. Olympus’s directors instead protected their own.

A thorough clean-out is needed, and a new leadership that can deal credibly with threats such as the company being delisted by the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Mr Kikukawa may have had good intentions, but dishonesty is dishonourable.