While 300,000 students are worrying about their prepaid tuition and 4,900 foreign teachers are waiting for unpaid wages, lawyers appointed to act as receivers for the bankrupt Nova Corp. recently discovered that Nozomu Sahashi, the former president, had secretly sold a 50%-plus stake in the ailing English-language school chain. Japan’s biggest foreign language school, Nova…

Westerners, including Oregonians, who taught English Growing up in Oregon, Kristen Campbell-Schmitt folded intricate paper cranes, worked in a Japanese restaurant and took a high school trip to Japan. Her passion for the country extended through the University of Oregon and returned her to Tokyo, where she began teaching English in 2005. Now Campbell-Schmitt, 26,…

The caretaker administrator of Nova Corp. announced Tuesday that they had started negotiations with three firms–one based in Tokyo and two in Osaka–to become corporate sponsors as part of efforts to rehabilitate the failed English conversation school chain operator. The administrator said he hoped to be able to choose a corporate sponsor next week. One…

Collapsed English-teaching company NOVA Corp. has unveiled the luxury office used by its former boss Nozomu Sahashi to the public, showing a bathroom overlooking the night scenery and expensive champagne and scotch whisky lined up at a bar counter. The 330-square-meter office, which has its own sauna and tea room, is located on the top…

Comparisons have been drawn between the business practices used by Nova Corp. and the scandal-hit nursing care provider Comsn Inc., as well as the manner in which both firms fell from grace. On June 13, the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry suspended Nova for six months from signing up students on new contracts of one…

Former NOVA President Nozomu Sahashi has come under suspicion of unfairly profiting from the sale of overpriced video-phone equipment, a lawyer for the collapsed English-teaching company has announced. Toshiaki Higashibatake, a lawyer serving as a preservation administrator for NOVA, made the announcement at a news conference in Osaka. The lawyer said a company that was…

It’s said that the bigger they come, the harder they fall, and it’s difficult to imagine a harder fall than Nova’s. Following Nova Corp.’s well-documented troubles over the last few months, Japan’s biggest language school chain is now in the hands of administrators, and is likely to be declared bankrupt next month unless a backer…

The government has promised to offer support for Nova Corp. in seeking corporate sponsors to help its turnaround efforts, lawyers working for the failed language school chain said Monday. “We came here to ask for help to find sponsors and also for support to Nova students who have been unable to take lessons,” lawyer Toshiaki…

The Osaka Labor Bureau will ask Nova Corp.’s caretaker administrators to confirm the home addresses of those foreign instructors who return to their home countries without receiving wages from the English conversation school chain and be responsible for paying them, the bureau announced Monday. The firm has failed to pay foreign instructors since September. Since…

English conversation school chain operator Nova Corp. has filed for court protection from creditors after running into financial trouble under its president, Nozomu Sahashi, who has since been sacked by the company’s other board members. This is the first installment of a three-part series of articles taking an in-depth look at Nova’s collapse. The three…