The cocaine nose jobs of Wall Street said that they have serious doubts that the root of the problem will be resolved – although a century or so of dodgy accounting never hurt them much.

Toshiba admitted that it was withdrawing its earnings guidance for the fiscal year ended March and cancelling a year-end dividend due as it expanded a previously announced investigation.

Toshiba had warned in April that it may have underreported costs of some infrastructure projects in the 2012/13 fiscal year. On Friday it said an internal probe, its second in less than two years, found other irregularities, including a failure to adequately book losses related to construction work.

Toshiba said it would set up a third-party committee to further investigate, and that it could not report its financial results for the year that ended in March, normally announced around this time, until June or later.

In October 2013 Toshiba found its medical subsidiary, Toshiba Medical Information Systems, had overstated results for several years.