In December 2015, short-seller Well Investments published a report which alleged that Japanese trading company Marubeni had avoided write-downs of commodity-related investments to the tune of ¥150-200bn (US$1.2-1.7bn). In April 2016, five months after the report, Marubeni reported preliminary FY16 results one-third of its original target largely owing to ¥70bn of impairment charges. This would seem to confirm that Marubeni was slow to write-down overvalued assets. In 2019, Marubeni became embroiled in another accounting scandal when it reported a loss of ¥3.9bn (US$35.8m) related to profit overstatement from its US agribusiness. 

Last updated March 2022

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