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Akai is a consumer electronics brand, now headquartered in Singapore. At its peak in the late 1990s, Akai Holdings employed 100,000 workers and had annual sales of HK$40 billion (US$5.2 billion), but it collapsed in 2000 owing creditors US$1,100m. In addition to some development of musical instruments, the Akai brand name is also used to rebadge electronics manufactured by other companies. "Akai" means red, hence the logo color, earlier also accompanied by a red dot. Akai Professional has been a separate company since 1999 and no longer has any connection with the consumer products.
Akai was founded by Masukichi Akai and his son, Saburo Akai as Akai Electric Company Ltd., a Japanese manufacturer in 1929 or 1946. At its peak in the late 1990s, Akai Holdings employed 100,000 workers and had annual sales of HK$40 billion (US$5.2 billion), but it collapsed in 2000 owing creditors US$1.1B. It emerged that ownership of Akai Holdings had somehow passed in 1999 to Grande Holdings, a company founded by Akai's chairman James Ting. The liquidators claimed that Ting had stolen over US$800m from the company with the assistance of accountants Ernst & Young who had tampered with audit documents going back to 1994. Ting was imprisoned for false accounting in 2005, and E&Y paid $200m to settle the negligence case out of court in September 2009. In a separate lawsuit, a former E&Y partner, Cristopher Ho, made a "substantial payment" to Akai creditors in his role as chairman of Grande Holdings.
