Fujitsu's finance chief apologized Wednesday over a huge scandal in Britain that led to hundreds of local postmasters being wrongly convicted of fraud because of the Japanese giant's faulty accounting software.

More than 700 sub-postmasters were found guilty of theft or false accounting between 1999 and 2015 after glitches in Fujitsu's IT system Horizon made it look as if money was missing. 

"The Fujitsu Group regards this matter with the utmost seriousness and offers its deepest apologies to the sub-postmasters and their families," Chief Financial Officer Takeshi Isobe told a news conference announcing the firm's earnings.

"The UK statutory public inquiry, to which our UK subsidiary is providing full cooperation, is examining complex events that have unfolded over many years, and we remain steadfast in our commitment to this cooperation," he told a news conference.

"The Fujitsu Group hopes for a swift resolution that ensures a just outcome for the victims," he said.

In what has been described as one of the UK's biggest miscarriages of justice, some of the hundreds of sub-postmasters convicted went to jail, went bankrupt or lost their homes. Four took their own lives.

Many people in Britain only became aware of the scandal because of a recent TV show and the public uproar has jolted the government into action.

Fujitsu -- which is headquartered in Tokyo -- is one of the world's largest IT services providers, with annual revenues of around $27 billion.

The firm has said it will abstain from bidding for new government contracts in Britain but Isobe said on Wednesday that the firm ruled out job cuts at present.

He added that it was not yet clear how much of an impact the suspension will have on its earnings.

"Our products are used widely in the service of the public... We will do our best to improve our quality control so that we can provide systems with the utmost credibility," Isobe said.

The head of Fujitsu's European arm Paul Patterson told a public inquiry probing the scandal earlier in January that the company had a "moral obligation" to help compensate the sub-postmasters.

"I am personally appalled by the evidence that I have seen and what I saw on the television drama," Patterson told lawmakers probing the scandal on 17 January.