Paper Says Toyota to Reshuffle Top Management

TOKYO, Feb 8, 2005; Reuters reported that Toyota Motor Corp. has finalised plans to promote an executive vice president in charge of purchasing to replace President Fujio Cho this June to rejuvenate the company's management, the Nihon Keizai newspaper reported on Tuesday.

An official announcement could come as early as Wednesday, with a formal decision pending until the general shareholders meeting at the end of June, the business daily said, without citing sources.

A Toyota spokesman declined to comment.

The reported shuffle, under which 62-year-old Katsuaki Watanabe would become president, would come as a surprise after speculation that Cho, 68, would stay put until Chairman Hiroshi Okuda's two-year term at the helm of Japan's biggest business lobby ends in May 2006.

Okuda will complete his term as chairman of the Japan Business Federation (Keidanren) as planned while remaining chairman of Toyota, and Cho will become vice chairman at the auto maker, the paper said. Cho is in his sixth year as president of the world's second-biggest auto maker.

With plans to boost global sales to 8.5 million units next year and expand into more markets and sectors, Toyota saw a need for a generational shift in its senior management, the Nihon Keizai said. It did not explain why the similarity in ages would constitute a generational shift.

Watanabe, who turns 63 on Sunday, joined Japan's top auto maker in 1964 and became one of its youngest board members in 1992. At the time, he was considered a future candidate for the presidency.

Unlike Cho, Watanabe has never held a post overseas, but he has broad experience in production -- as supervisor of one of Toyota's main car assembly plants in central Japan -- procurement and corporate planning, among others.

His current responsibilities include overseeing Toyota's new business development, procurement, IT, housing, government and public affairs.

Also under the new management, Senior Managing Director Akio Toyoda, 48, the eldest son of founder and honorary Chairman Shoichiro Toyoda, would become a vice president, the paper said.