It's all rumour and speculation right now, but the word on the Intergoogles is that Sony is negotiating a captial-and-business alliance with Olympus, which should help Olympus out of its current cash-flow crisis brought on by a financial scandal of epic proportions.
The deal has been reported by Japanese business journal Diamond Weekly and suggests that Sony, which already has a 0.03% stake in Olympus, could lay out for upto 30% more, with particular interest in its medical imaging division.
Some kind of alliance had been mooted by the senior execs at Olympus last year, when its cash-flow problems and financial mis-management almost saw it de-listed from the Tokyo Stock Exchange. There's now no immediate threat of that happening, as the Tokyo Stock Exchange placed Olympus on probabtion for three years, but it still needs to find some cash from somewhere. It seems as if Sony might've made the Olympus board the best offer.
If the deal were to go ahead, we'd likely hear about it from a press conference some time next week. But I suppose that there's always time for Fujifilm get in on the act.
(Headsup to TechCrunch)