Former Olympus chief executive, Michael Woodford, who was sacked for blowing the whistle on a £1.7 billion fraud scandal, will receive a payoff of £10 million.
Woodford, who left the Japanese consumer and medical camera manufacturer after only two weeks, will receive the pay-out following his agreement to an out-of-court settlement last week.
He said: “In today’s settlement between myself and the company, we reached a fair and amicable agreement, and I would like to take this opportunity to wish the new board well in taking Olympus forward.”
According to the Guardian, Woodford had originally demanded 10 years’ salary or $56 million (£36.3 million) for wrongful dismissal, however.
Since his disclosures of accounting irregularities at Olympus, the company’s board has been partially replaced and the scandal investigated by the UK Serious Fraud Office and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The firm’s shares are now trading at about 80% of their value before trouble hit and it lost Y49 billion or about £400 million last year.
But today, Olympus also announced that it intended to axe 2,700 jobs or 7% of its global workforce by the end of March 2014 as part of its cost-cutting efforts. About 40% of its 30 manufacturing plants around the world will also be closed by the end of March 2015.
