Fujitsu role in Britain’s Post Office scandal could have severe reputational consequences, analysts say
Post Office has attributed the record amount for personal cash withdrawals at its 11,500 branches to more staycations in the U.K. and people using cash to manage their budgets.
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LONDON — Fujitsu‘s role in the U.K. Post Office scandal, dubbed the “most widespread miscarriage of justice” in British history, has analysts wary of what the fallout could look like for the Japanese IT giant.
Between 1999 and 2015, a fault with the company’s Horizon computer software used by the Post Office, a state-owned private company employing thousands of people across the country, resulted in more than 700 sub-postmasters being subjected to false prosecutions. Thousands more were driven to destitution, illness and in several cases, suicide.
The U.K.’s High Court ruled in 2019 that the Horizon software was at fault for the misreported losses at Post Office branches throughout the country, and a public inquiry was ordered by the government to take place in the following year.
However, the scandal has been re-ignited following the airing of a TV docudrama earlier this month, which showed that despite the acknowledgment, the sub-postmasters had never received adequate compensation for the financial and emotional damage inflicted.
The British government has introduced legislation to exonerate all convicted sub-postmasters and set aside £1 billion ($1.27 billion) in compensation for the victims, saying it will pursue Fujitsu if an ongoing inquiry finds the company is to blame.
Despite the furor in the U.K., Fujitsu shares are only down around 2% since the turn of the year, having suffered an initial drop after the company’s European co-CEO Paul Patterson said compensating Post Office victims was a “moral obligation,” before recovering over the past week.
Former subpostmasters celebrate outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, on April 23, 2021, following a court ruling clearing subpostmasters of convictions for theft and false accounting. – Dozens of former subpostmasters, who were convicted of theft, fraud and false accounting because of the Post Office’s defective Horizon accounting system, have finally had their names cleared by the Court of Appeal. (Photo by Tolga Akmen / AFP) (Photo by TOLGA AKMEN/AFP via Getty Images)
Tolga Akmen | Afp | Getty Images
Patterson later told U.K. lawmakers at the Business and Trade select committee on Friday that the company had “clearly let society down” and that there were “bugs errors and defects” with the Horizon software “from the very start.”
In a statement Thursday, Fujitsu said it regards the matter with the “utmost seriousness and offers its deepest apologies to the sub-postmasters and their families.”
“The U.K. statutory public Inquiry, to which our U.K. subsidiary is providing full cooperation, is examining complex events that have unfolded over many years, and we remain steadfast in our commitment to this cooperation,” the company said.
“Based on the findings of the Inquiry, we will also be working with the UK government on the appropriate actions, including contribution to compensation.”
Fallout could have ‘more negative consequences’ for Fujitsu
Tim Morse, founding partner of Asymmetric Advisors, told CNBC last week that while Fujitsu may not be on the hook for the entirety of the £1 billion compensation fund, it will have to shoulder a “reasonable financial burden,” and the company becoming persona non grata for future government contracts is “certainly a possibility.”
A spokesperson for Fujitsu wasn’t immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC.
Members of Parliament on the Treasury select committee wrote to the government and other public sector institutions last week to demand that details of any contracts awarded to Fujitsu since 2019 be made public.
“The name of Fujitsu has been tainted, but don’t forget that Fujitsu — and previously to Fujitsu, ICL, which was very close to the U.K. government and was bought by Fujitsu in the early nineties — they’re very well embedded in U.K. government IT contracts, so actually replacing Fujitsu could be very expensive,” he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia.”
He suggested the greater fear is that there could be further frailties identified in government-contracted programs, with issues already identified in Japan relating to ATM systems and national ID cards, along with an outage on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in 2020.
Mio Kato, founder of LightStream Research, told CNBC last week that he was surprised by the relatively “tepid” reaction in the stock price so far, because although the compensation payment may not be the “end of the world” for a company of Fujitsu’s size, the “reputational consequences could be more severe.”
“You do have these little issues cropping up attached to Fujitsu and while it’s impossible to completely iron out all bugs, the frequency is a bit of a concern considering that Fujitsu tends to supply their clients with really mission-critical software and systems,” he said, noting that the company may need to increase spending on quality control.
“So while this event may be quite U.K.-specific, what’s really concerning to us is the length of time over which it persisted, and the fact that even after certain evidence did seem to emerge suggesting that there were problems with their Horizon system, it wasn’t addressed in a timely manner.”
Kato suggested potential Fujitsu clients would have “significant concerns” about this aspect of the allegations.
“While this case hasn’t necessarily attracted massive attention outside of the U.K. yet, as it drags on, this could have more negative consequences for Fujitsu, so I’m still relatively cautious about the short- to medium-term outlook until we see exactly what the total fallout is,” he added.
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Technology
Nvidia positioned to weather Trump tariffs, chip demand ‘off the charts,’ says Altimeter’s Gerstner
Altimeter Capital CEO Brad Gerstner said Thursday that he’s moving out of the “bomb shelter” with Nvidia and into a position of safety, expecting that the chipmaker is positioned to withstand President Donald Trump’s widespread tariffs.
“The growth and the demand for GPUs is off the charts,” he told CNBC’s “Fast Money Halftime Report,” referring to Nvidia’s graphics processing units that are powering the artificial intelligence boom. He said investors just need to listen to commentary from OpenAI, Google and Elon Musk.
President Trump announced an expansive and aggressive “reciprocal tariff” policy in a ceremony at the White House on Wednesday. The plan established a 10% baseline tariff, though many countries like China, Vietnam and Taiwan are subject to steeper rates. The announcement sent stocks tumbling on Thursday, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq down more than 5%, headed for its worst day since 2022.
The big reason Nvidia may be better positioned to withstand Trump’s tariff hikes is because semiconductors are on the list of exceptions, which Gerstner called a “wise exception” due to the importance of AI.
Nvidia’s business has exploded since the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in 2022, and annual revenue has more than doubled in each of the past two fiscal years. After a massive rally, Nvidia’s stock price has dropped by more than 20% this year and was down almost 7% on Thursday.
Gerstner is concerned about the potential of a recession due to the tariffs, but is relatively bullish on Nvidia, and said the “negative impact from tariffs will be much less than in other areas.”
He said it’s key for the U.S. to stay competitive in AI. And while the company’s chips are designed domestically, they’re manufactured in Taiwan “because they can’t be fabricated in the U.S.” Higher tariffs would punish companies like Meta and Microsoft, he said.
“We’re in a global race in AI,” Gerstner said. “We can’t hamper our ability to win that race.”
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YouTube on Thursday announced new video creation tools for Shorts, its short-form video feed that competes against TikTok.
The features come at a time when TikTok, which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, is at risk of an effective ban in the U.S. if it’s not sold to an American owner by April 5.
Among the new tools is an updated video editor that allows creators to make precise adjustments and edits, a feature that automatically syncs video cuts to the beat of a song and AI stickers.
The creator tools will become available later this spring, said YouTube, which is owned by Google.
Along with the new features, YouTube last week said it was changing the way view counts are tabulated on Shorts. Under the new guidelines, Shorts views will count the number of times the video is played or replayed with no minimum watch time requirement.
Previously, views were only counted if a video was played for a certain number of seconds. This new tabulation method is similar to how views are counted on TikTok and Meta’s Reels, and will likely inflate view counts.
“We got this feedback from creators that this is what they wanted. It’s a way for them to better understand when their Shorts have been seen,” YouTube Chief Product Officer Johanna Voolich said in a YouTube video. “It’s useful for creators who post across multiple platforms.”
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