At the sharp end

EUPHORIA has recently broken out over a supposed new dawn of better corporate governance and higher profits for Japanese industry. But bad news this week from Sharp, a firm once a symbol of the country's economic clout, and Toshiba, another engineering giant, were reminders of how incomplete the transformation is. On May 14th Sharp announced its second restructuring and bail-out plan in three years. The chronically indebted and lossmaking firm said it would make an accounting adjustment that wil...