Olympus Corp.'s 2009 sale of a profitable diagnostics unit it spent four decades building up for what appeared to be a bargain price is beginning to make sense as the company admits covering up decades of losses.

A day after announcing the purchase, Beckman Coulter Inc. Chief Executive Officer Scott Garrett told analysts the Olympus division's "long and enviable track record of above-market growth" would give an immediate boost to earnings. The deal won an upgrade for Beckman from Barclays Capital. Olympus' then-president, Tsuyoshi Kikukawa, said the camera maker couldn't compete in the sector, even as he bought face cream, plastic cookware and recycling firms.

"If we hadn't wasted all our money on silly things," diagnostics "would have been a really good business to invest in," said ousted Olympus CEO Michael C. Woodford, who publicly questioned Kikukawa's acquisitions after he was fired on Oct. 14. "We had to strengthen our balance sheet and didn't have the money to invest."