Too early to predict Fujifilm move on Olympus: Fujifilm executive
26 Dec 2011
Though camera and allied 3D products maker Fujifilm is keeping a keen eye on developments at scandal-hit Olympus Corp, it is keeping its options to make a possible investment in the scandal-hit rival Olympus, a senior Fujifilm executive told Retuers in an interview on Monday.
Fujifilm, which makes film and cameras, is in the process of diversification into medical equipment and pharmaceuticals. Fuji as also Sony Corp and Panasonic Corp were named by a newspaper last week as potential investors in Olympus. According to the report, Olympus was seeking to replenish its capital base with the issue of $1.3 billion in preferred shares.
Referring to Olympus's profitable endoscope division, Kouichi Tamai, the head of Fujifilm's medical systems unit, said that an investment would make good business sense.
Olympus commands 70 per cent share of the flexible endoscope market while Fujifilm and Hoya Corp hold the rest.
Though Olympus has admitted to concealing investment losses on several M&A deals, it did manage to avoid an automatic delisting, by keeping to a 14 December earnings report deadline. However, it could still be delisted if the Tokyo bourse were to deem its past false accounting as sufficiently serious (See: Tokyo bourse puts Olympus on delisting watch)
Tamai told the news agency that he was looking at several acquisition targets in the healthcare field, and Fujifilm had already bought a number of firms recently as it targeted a sale of ¥370 billion (approximately Rs24,790 crore /$4.68 billion) in fiscal 2013-2014, a 38-per cent leap over the past year ended in March.
It is buying out US-based SonoSite Inc for $995 million including debt, a deal which it hoped would make it the world's largest maker of portable ultrasound equipment in three years.
He added he was not sure whether hospitals would switch away from Olympus' endoscopes in the wake of the accounting scandal and the extent to which this would benefit Fujifilm would benefit in the event they did.