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Portfolio acquires Woodford whistleblower title

21.02.12 | Charlotte Williams

Portfolio has acquired a memoir by Michael Woodford, the 51-year-old former president and c.e.o. of Olympus, who turned whistleblower when he uncovered an accounting fraud worth more than $1bn within the company that the board was trying to hide.

Editorial director Joel Rickett bought world English language rights jointly with Adrian Zackheim at Penguin USA through Patrick Walsh of Conville & Walsh, with plans to publish in hardback this November. Walsh said there were originally individual but simultaneous auctions in the UK and US, with a final three in each territory, with Penguin UK and US then joining forces to make a collective bid.

Walsh said the book was "a wonderful narrative memoir", aimed between the markets for Liar's Poker and Lost in Translation. It will detail how Woodford unearthed the fraud, having become the first British president of Japanese firm Olympus, heading up its 46,000-strong staff in Tokyo last April.

Once he discovered the fraud, he confronted the Olympus board of directors six times, telling them to come clean, and on the seventh attempt, the board voted to fire Woodford on the spot. He then blew the story through the Financial Times, and subsequently the seven board members have been arrested, and the rest of the company's directors have resigned. Woodford has been voted businessman of the year in the Sunday Times.

The 90,000-word manuscript will be delivered this June, and Rickett will be the lead editor.

The book was sold on the strength of a proposal, entitled "Exposure: How One Man Climbed Olympus and the Scandal that He Discovered There". It was first auctioned in Japan, being sold for a "high six-figure dollar" Japanese deal with Hiroshi Hayakawa at Hayakawa Publishing, with Hamish MacAskill of the English Agency in Tokyo acting for Conville & Walsh.

• Adrian Zackheim
• Charlotte Williams
• Joel Rickett
• Michael Woodfird
• Olympus
• Patrick Walsh
• Rights deal
• Viking