Toshiba finds ten fresh cases of accounting errors

The head of scandal-tarred Toshiba yesterday said it had found a half-decade’s worth of new accounting problems, forcing it to further delay closing its books. However, it does not expect a big impact on its projected results.

The laptops-to-nuclear conglomerate has found ten new cases of accounting errors stretching back to around 2010, although these will not drastically affect Toshiba’s forecast for an operating profit of 170bn yen (€1.25bn) for the year ended March 31, Chief executive Masashi Muromachi said after Toshiba again delayed its book-closing.

Toshiba, struggling to emerge from a €1.1bn bookkeeping scandal, was unable to release its annual results yesterday as planned after finding additional errors, including incorrect impairment charges on fixed assets at several subsidiaries and improperly timed booking of loss provisions at a US subsidiary.

Muromachi said the US unit was not its Westinghouse nuclear business.

The errors will not be “huge”, Muromachi said, declining to say what the scale of the new problems might be.

Toshiba is to sell all the shares it owns in optical equipment maker Topcon for around 50bn-60bn yen.

The company said it expects to book a pre-tax gain of 30bn-40bn yen from the sale.