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 The 300 million yen ($2.44 million) in damages Toshiba is seeking
pales in comparison with the over $7 billion decline in its stock
market value since the accounting problems came to light in early
April.
Moreover, lawyers said, Toshiba has yet to fully explain why it is
limiting its lawsuit to just five former executives, effectively
absolving some current officials who were in senior roles during the
years it was padding profits.
Such doubts highlight worries that Japan's newly-implemented
corporate governance guidelines could fail to bring about
substantial improvements in management accountability.
The laptops-to-nuclear conglomerate said on Saturday that it sued
five former executives, including three former CEOs, for
mismanagement. The move came after an individual investor threatened
to sue executives including current CEO Masashi Muromachi, unless
Toshiba did so itself.
"What investors are most concerned about is whether the current top
executives, including the chairman and CEO, are responsible ... It
feels strange that the company has not touched on why the current
CEO is not held accountable," said Nobuo Gohara, a lawyer who took
part in an audit of Olympus Corp after its accounting scandal in
2011.
"You can't really say we're seeing better corporate governance at
work when the company has sued just so that it won't get sued."
The unnamed investor had demanded that Toshiba sue 28 former and
current executives including Muromachi for 1 billion yen in damages.
Yoshihiko Kin, a lawyer representing the investor, said the lawsuit,
while better than nothing, was lacking.
"We're considering a lawsuit against the executives who were not
sued by the company," he told Reuters.
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Previous CEO Hisao Tanaka, his two predecessors, and a string of
other senior officials resigned in July. Muromachi, a director
during most of the period the company inflated its earnings, was
promoted to CEO.
Toshiba has said it inflated its profits by about 155 billion yen
over roughly seven years. Third-party investigators blamed senior
management as well as a culture that discouraged employees from
questioning authority.
Toshiba has since appointed more outsiders to its board of
directors, in a nod to the new corporate governance code promoted by
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
But corporate law expert Daisuke Yuki, at Nozomi Sogo Attorneys at
Law, said it was still unclear how much effort had gone into
establishing that others were not responsible.
Toshiba declined to comment.
(Additional reporting by Ritsuko Ando; Editing by Stephen Coates)
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