Sony expected to have JPY220 billion loss in the beginning of Feb, which came to the public after its announcement of new CEO Kazuo Hirai will take over Howard Stringer in the new fiscal year starting from this April 1st.
http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2012/02/02/sony-expects-nearly-3-billion-loss/The latest news yesterday was the net loss would be as high as JPY520 billion, more than double than it's own forecast. The company blamed tax expenses - approximately 300 billion yen ($3.6 billion) - related to its assets in the United States.
http://business.blogs.cnn.com/2012/04/10/sony-losses-to-be-double-earlier-predictions/This is too far-fetching to believe a sophisticated multinational company would accidentally forget calculating (or miscalculating) its tax expense as much as $3.6 billion, and did not find out till it consolidated all the data of the fiscal year.
So, I went to Sony's webstie and found out that the extra JPY 300 billion was due to increase of "valuation allowance" last year, so accordingly the company will have JPY300 billion of "deferred tax asset" as "credit" in this fiscal year. In the company's statement, it reads, "This expected charge represents approximately 80 percent of the aggregate additional tax expense."
http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/financial/fr/11revision_sony.pdfThe new CEO has extra JPY300 billion in his pocket as leverage. But the news said the company projected operating profit of JPY180 billion in this fiscal year (from Apr. 1, 2012 to Mar. 31, 2013). Well, if in FY2013 Sony makes JPY300, then it just fairly keeps what he hides behind the book value. Apparently, Mr. Kazuo HIRAI just set the target of this year to keep 60% of what took from the book of last fiscal year.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-04-10/sony-widens-net-loss-estimate-to-520-billion-yen 
