Mitsubishi Motors President Plans To Propose Management Changes

Wall Street Journal is reporting that Mitsubishi Motors Corp. President Takashi Sonobe said Tuesday he will propose top management changes at a company board meeting to speed up a turnaround at the ailing automaker. Tokyo-based Mitsubishi, which is 37.3 percent-owned by DaimlerChrysler AG of Germany, has been trying to boost its plunging sales in Japan and fix its battered image following a defect cover-up that surfaced in the summer of 2000. In that scandal, the automaker said it had been hiding auto defects targeted in customer complaints for more than two decades in an effort to avoid costly recalls and protect its image. Sonobe said in a statement he will talk to reporters after the board meeting Wednesday, where he will propose "top management change for acceleration of the turnaround progress," setting off speculation he will likely step down and hand over his post to Chief Operating Officer Rolf Eckrodt. The company declined further comment. Eckrodt was sent in by DaimlerChrysler last year to help Mitsubishi's recovery and has been running the company with Sonobe.