Nidec isn't a household name outside Japan, so by way of background, Nidec is the Kyoto company that makes the small electric motors in hard drives, dishwashers and car seats, and a few years ago it bet heavily on making the motor-and-gearbox units that drive electric cars. That bet went badly and while it was going badly the company also learned that it had been overstating its profits for years. Since June 2025 it has been battling an outside investigation, its founder giving up his last title (though not his shares…), a warning from the Tokyo Stock Exchange that it could be delisted, and a three-month extension on filing its annual accounts. Those accounts are due tomorrow.

Now, last autumn, after the investigation concluded, Nidec said the corrections would cut its net worth by "approximately ¥160.7 billion." On March 3 it said it "may recognise" further write-downs "of up to approximately ¥250 billion."

Hang on, what is a write-down? When a company buys something, or builds something, it records what it paid as the value of that thing. If the thing turns out to be worth a lot less, the company has to admit that on paper and take the loss. No cash actually leaves the company, but it's a public admission that the business is worth less than the company said it was.

On Monday morning the business magazine Diamond Online reported that the board had met on Friday, decided to remove president and CEO, Mitsuya Kishida, and that the write-down could be about ¥1 trillion, roughly $6.4 billion, or four times the last figure the company gave. The shares fell as far as the Tokyo exchange allows in a single day, about 18 percent and are down about 20 percent on the week.

Then Nidec spoke via a press release titled “Press Release Regarding a Certain Media Report.”

The part of the release that matters is two sentences: "while it is true that change in executive members and a large-amount impairment are being discussed, none of them has been decided by the Company at this moment," and "Nidec will promptly announce any decision or important matter that should be disclosed when it emerges."

So what Nidec's statement basically said was, yes, we're talking about replacing the CEO, and yes, we're talking about a very big write-down, but we haven't officially signed off on either one yet. That confirmed the heart of the Diamond story but the thing still unknown was how big the loss would be, and that was the one thing Nidec wasn't ready to say. So every business reporter in Tokyo went looking for it.

By Monday evening, Nikkei, Japan's main business newspaper, had its own figures. It reported that the loss on the electric-car motor business alone would be more than ¥600 billion (about $3.8 billion), and that adding the accounting corrections the company had already flagged would bring the total close to ¥1 trillion. It also reported that Kishida would probably resign as soon as Tuesday to take responsibility for the losses, that the company's CTO was a likely replacement, and that Nidec would have to correct five years of past financial results. As I write this, Nidec still hasn't given a number of its own.

To be fair to Nidec, it didn't have much choice about that statement. In Japan, when a newspaper reports something that could move a company's share price, the stock exchange expects the company to respond quickly, but a company can't just announce a decision its board hasn't yet formally made. And Nidec has just been through an accounting scandal, so its lawyers are going to scrub every word. "We're discussing it, we haven't decided" is about as far as those rules let you go. It may also simply have been true: in Nikkei's version, Kishida had decided to leave but hadn't handed in his resignation yet.

Why this is more than just a bad week

It's worth stepping back to see how much is riding on this week, because this is more than a bad news cycle. If the loss comes in near ¥1 trillion, it would be one of the biggest write-downs any Japanese company has ever taken, according to Bloomberg, and it would wipe out more than half of the roughly ¥1.7 trillion the company says it's worth on its own books.

Into all of that, Nidec is about to lose its CEO. Kishida came from Sony in 2024 and has been in the job less than three years. That makes him the second successor to leave in four years. Nikkei says the CTO is a candidate to replace him, but nobody has been announced. So on the day the company publishes its restated accounts, whoever is running it will be asked to vouch for numbers they didn't produce, in front of a stock exchange deciding whether to delist it, an activist deciding how hard to push, and possible buyers deciding whether to bid. One fund manager told Bloomberg that until the full impact of the accounting problems is clear, "it will be quite difficult for other parties to make a move." In other words, nobody can decide what to do about Nidec until they believe its numbers. That's why the credibility of this week's figure matters so much more than the headlines it will get.

So what did Monday’s release cost them? The statement confirmed the story but not the size, which just left reporters to go try to find the size themselves. They had every reason to assume it was bigger than the last figure, because Nidec's numbers have only gone one way which is up. Over the past year the company has put out figures of ¥160.7 billion and ¥250 billion, and this week the press is reporting ¥600 billion to ¥1 trillion. So nobody believes a Nidec number is the last (or smaller) one anymore.

What I'd tell a CCO or a board facing this:

Before any estimate goes out, ask: what would make this number bigger? If the honest answer is "the investigation isn't finished," do not (I repeat, do not) publish a ceiling. Drop "up to." Say what the figure covers, what it doesn't cover yet, and that the total could grow as that work finishes. A number that grows after you warned it might will hurt. A number that blows through the worst case you gave will hurt much more, because now it's a trust problem on top of a money problem.

Before any estimate goes out, ask what would make this number bigger? If the honest answer is "the investigation isn't finished," do not (I repeat, do not) publish a ceiling. Drop "up to." Say what the figure covers, what it doesn't cover yet, and that it could grow. A number that grows after you warned it might will hurt. A number that blows through the worst case you gave will hurt much more, because now it's a trust problem on top of a money problem.

Decide who vouches for the number before you decide what the number is. An outgoing CEO can't really say "this is the final figure," because he's leaving over it. A successor named that week can't either, because they didn't produce it. So it has to come from the people who oversaw the investigation: the independent directors, the audit committee chair or the outside investigators. They have to say what was checked, by whom, and why they're confident it's now complete. Then the new CEO talks only about what happens next. Split the job that way and the new leader's first day won’t (entirely) be spent defending someone else's numbers.

Decide ahead of time what you'll say if the news leaks before the board has signed off. Most companies will end up close to Nidec's "being discussed, not decided," and that's fine. But agree in advance on the one fact you can add without breaking any rules, which is usually a date that's already public, like a filing deadline, a results day or a scheduled board meeting.

When the final number goes out, explain how you got there. Show the path from the first figure to this one: what the investigators found at each stage and why the estimate went up. That's how you make the increase read as an investigation doing its job and not a company letting bad news trickle out a little bit at a time. Then say what has been checked, who checked it, and what would have to happen for the number to move again.

Write the first message for employees, not investors. Your staff will be the ones explaining five years of corrected results to customers, suppliers and their own families, and most of them will hear about it on the news first. Make sure they hear it from you.

If you’re building an international team, another company has likely already wrestled with the same questions you’re facing.

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