Toshiba’s chief executive and president Hisao Tanaka is to resign after the company said it had overstated its profits for the past six years.

He will be succeeded by chairman Masashi Muromachi, with vice-chairman Norio Sasaki also stepping down.

On Monday, an independent panel appointed by Toshiba said the firm had overstated its operating profit by a total of 151.8bn yen ($1.22bn), the BBC reports.

The overstatement was roughly triple an initial Toshiba estimate.

The finance minister, Taro Aso, said the case could undermine confidence in corporate governance in Japan.

He added the accounting irregularities at Toshiba were “very regrettable”,.

Japan’s government has been trying to regain global investors’ confidence with better corporate governance after Olympus, was found to have covered up $1.7bn in losses in late 2011, in what was until now Japan’s worst corporate governance scandal.