Olympus has tapped a 54-year-old German to head the Japanese group in its first appointment of a foreign chief executive since the 2011 accounting scandal and the ousting of its then boss Michael Woodford.
Stefan Kaufmann, the group’s chief strategy officer who has spent almost two decades at the Japanese company, told reporters on Friday that his appointment to the top job from April next year was a signal of “a new Olympus”, pointing to its transformed governance structure and a sharpened focus on its medical device business.
“With the change in the executive structure and the assignment of a non-Japanese CEO, we are really entering into a new chapter,” Kaufmann said. “The company today has nothing in common with the company of 10 or 15 years ago.”
Over the past decade, there has been a gradual increase in the number of foreign executives running Japanese companies. Mitsubishi Chemical appointed a Belgian as chief last year, while Christophe Weber, a Frenchman, has headed pharmaceutical group Takeda since 2015.
But their record is mixed. Woodford’s brief spell at Olympus ended abruptly after he lifted the lid on a $1.7bn accounting scandal. More recently, Carlos Ghosn, the former chair of Nissan, made a dramatic escape from Tokyo to Beirut in 2019 after facing financial misconduct charges that he continues to deny.
In preparations to take over as chief, Kaufmann, who has also served as the group’s chief transformation officer, said he was in contact with other foreign bosses at Japanese companies.
Olympus has undergone a radical transformation since the corporate crisis that followed the accounting scandal. In 2019, in a case widely seen as a turning point for activism in Japan, US fund ValueAct convinced the company to accept three foreign directors on its board.
In addition to globalising and diversifying its management structure, the company also introduced audit, nomination and compensation committees to improve its governance.
Under current chief executive Yasuo Takeuchi, Olympus took steps to improve its profitability by concentrating on medical devices and pulling out of its lossmaking camera business two years ago.
“We can now shift to the next phase to accelerate growth and improve performance,” Takeuchi said on Friday. “I have full confidence that Stefan will continue this momentum.”
Despite the changes, however, Kaufmann said the 2011 scandal continued to weigh on the company’s reputation, particularly in Japan.
“I always feel that our company has changed so much and that we deserve more recognition in a positive way,” he said. “I hope in my new role now, it will be kind of a new start.’