Olympus reveals £420m hole as Woodford fights

Disgraced Japanese cameras maker Olympus has revealed a $655 million (£420 million) hole in its balance sheet after admitting to a 13-year fraud at the company.

Its ousted chief executive, Michael Woodford, is today meeting the ruling Democratic Party of Japan in Tokyo to discuss ways to tighten up corporate governance.

Woodford, who was fired two months ago and blew the whistle on questionable acquisition deals at the centre of its accounting problems, is campaigning to be reinstated.

He said: "The shareholding balance is such that there is a realistic chance we could win a proxy fight."

Olympus has filed five years worth of corrected statements, plus its overdue first-half results, narrowly avoiding a delisting.

There was a first-half net loss of 32.33 billion yen (£266.4 million) to end-September 2011. The hole in the accounts is to end-March.