Olympus 2012 Annual Report Download - page 12

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Three months have passed since you became chairman of Olympus in April. How
do you view your role at Olympus in consideration of your previous experience?
I joined The Sumitomo Bank (now Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation) in 1971. After retiring from the bank as a
director, in 2006 I became president and representative director of Japan Research Institute. I spent more than two-
thirds of my 36-year career at the bank in work related to overseas operations. In Europe, I served as president and
chaired the board of directors of a locally incorporated bank. Banking has traditionally been a regulated industry. I served
for many years in overseas countries where deregulation and liberalization have advanced further than in Japan, and
have accumulated wide-ranging experience which allows me to better forecast how the Japanese market will change in
the coming years. I have also been involved in large-scale organizational reform, and my experience includes starting up
organizations from scratch on several occasions. I consider my mission to be to apply these experiences in leading
Olympus to rebirth and renewal.
Olympus is now in a period of unprecedented turbulence. If we examine Olympus employees and products, it is
clear that Olympus has a broad range of products, many of which are not suited to mass production, and as a result has
a diverse portfolio of technologies and many talented employees who have mastered them. Since there are no problems
with Olympus businesses themselves, I think the best approach is for the employees to carry on with work as before.
However, it is necessary to rebuild corporate governance nearly from scratch. To that end, the most important thing is to
establish a framework in which people go about their business as usual rather than relying on a new scheme, and I
Q1
Interview with the Chairman
In April 2012, the new management team signed a
commitment to compliance declaration, and Olympus
transitioned to a new management system in which
the business execution function and supervision
function are clearly segregated. We asked Chairman
Yasuyuki Kimoto about corporate governance at the
reborn Olympus and outstanding governance issues.
OLYMPUS 󱚈 Annual Report 2012
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