Olympus Adviser Shut Brokerage After SEC, FINRA Inspection

Axes America LLC, the now-defunct brokerage firm that advised Olympus Corp. in a transaction being investigated by the FBI, ceased operations in March 2008 soon after U.S. regulators began examining its books, records show.

Beginning in 2006, New York-based Axes America served as adviser to Olympus in its $2.1 billion acquisition of Gyrus Group Plc, a British medical device manufacturer, in 2008. PriceWaterhouseCoopers LLP, which examined the transaction for the Olympus board, reported last month that the Tokyo-based company paid $687 million in fees to Axes America and a related Cayman Islands fund, Axam Investments Ltd.