The FT has published a thoughtful article about the damage that Mr Bates v the Post Office is doing to Fujitsu – both in the UK and in Japan.

It concludes

While some investors view faults with the Horizon system as a legacy issue, Atsushi Osanai, a professor at Waseda Business School, warned that the scandal was still very much alive. “Whether Fujitsu can respond to this problem carefully from the viewpoint of moral responsibility will have an impact on Fujitsu’s brand as a whole,” he said.

Horizon was repurposed for the Post Office, it was originally designed to manage our social security system and was dumped by the then DSS at a cost of £720m back in 1999.

Having lost its first customer, the Government owned Post Office turned out to be the consolation prize.  The reason Horizon was dumped by the DSS was that it was not fit for its  wider purpose, Fujitsu’s European CEO has now admitted to parliament

“All bugs and errors have been known at one level or not, for many, many years. Right from the very start of deployment of the system, there were bugs, errors and defects, which were well known. To all parties,”

“All parties” did not include the sub-postmasters, the users of Horizon as an accounting system. It won’t escape reader’s notice that Government had a common interest in Horizon and its ongoing relationship with Fujitsu is now coming under scrutiny.

The part the British Government has played in this is significant and we shouldn’t look at other’s specks without acknowledging our logs

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The Japanese in the UK

In the 1990s , Japanese financial institutions – Nomura, Yamaichi, Daiwa and Sumitomo were enormously powerful in the City. Some still are. Having worked at Gissings at the time , I saw how the Japanese management operated a “hands off” policy, much as overseas potentates do with Premier League football clubs.

I would not say that this led to corruption , but it did allow certain practices to grow up within the financial institutions I worked with, which would not have been tolerated where a more hands on approach to top-down governance existed.

The FT article hints at the dangers of such an approach.

UK Post Office scandal exposes risks of Fujitsu’s hands-off approach

Even to this day, we regard Japanese technology as a thing apart, we may no longer have SONY as our go to consumer brand but firms such as Fujitsu still command a respect that stems from Japan’s pre-eminence in consumer electronics in the late 20th century.

The Japanese in the UK have remained mysterious to us, the Fujitsu scandal may have wider repercussions in terms of brand . But we should not allow prejudice born of ignorance to become xenophobia.

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Appetite to continue in the UK

My impression of the Japanese corporate culture is based on its immense pride in its own dignity. The local Brit would unwittingly insult Japanese executives in all manner of ways, to a point that a local industry existed in the City , teaching us the conventions of dealing with visiting Japanese executives.

The calamity of reputational damage is felt very deeply by Japanese senior managers, firms like Toshiba have proved toxic. It is important for the future of our relationship with Japanese companies in the UK , that we do understand the delicate balance that the hands off approach has required.

Paradoxically, Fujitsu may need more support from the UK than punishment. Recognising that there is genuine remorse from Fujitsu , may be in the interests of all. A simple blood-lust for revenge is likely to jeopardise corporate relations for generations to come.

Now is the time for the UK to accept the offers of compensation being put forward by Fujitsu and to cement not just Fujitsu’s but Japan’s ongoing support for the UK.

We are not so strong in ourselves as to lose an important trading partner. We should not look remorse like a gift horse.  We should recognise that Japan , for its many faults, is one of the few trading partners we have outside of Europe whom we have an easy working relationship.

Let’s make sure we keep it that way , without compromising our reputation for fairness, decency and humility.