By Danny Fenster
ticklethewire.com
Who knew an advisory roll could pay out so well?
Hajime Sagawa and Akio Nakagawa, two Japanese bankers, spent their career moving from firm to firm on Wall Street, reports the New York Times. Then, when advising the Japanese company Olympus–largely successful in medical equipment but better known as a camera maker–on their takeover of a British company, the two bankers were paid $687 million.
“But the fee amount was more than 30 times the norm on Wall Street,” reports the Times. And now the FBI is investigating.
“This is about following the money,” Jonathan R. Macey, a professor of corporate law and governance at Yale, told the Times. “It’s very unusual and raises a classic red flag, pointing to either a waste of company assets or corruption.”
The payment went in part to “a tiny, unknown firm,” says the Times, run by the two bankers, and the rest to a Caymen Islands company with ties to one of the two men. Both firms closed up shop shortly after the payments were made.
The focus of the investigation is not yet clear, and spokespeople for the FBI declined the Times requests for comment.
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