Toshiba Corp named Satoshi Tsunakawa its next president as the troubled electronics conglomerate promotes from within after an accounting scandal.
Tsunakawa, currently a senior vice president, is to replace Masashi Muromachi, who is staying on as a special adviser, the Tokyo-based firm said yesterday.
Shigenori Shiga has been named as the next chairman. The appointments are subject to shareholder approval at a meeting scheduled for late next month.
Toshiba’s new helmsman yesterday acknowledged the energy-to-electronics conglomerate’s problems and pledged to narrow the sprawling company’s focus.
“Improving our financial status is a big problem. We’ve chosen three areas to focus on: energy, infrastructure and storage. We would like to show steady growth in those areas,” Tsunakawa told reporters.
Toshiba has been plagued by record losses and executive resignations after unveiling years of padded profits at the conglomerate, which makes everything from computers to nuclear power equipment. The company is narrowing its businesses, selling its medical unit to Canon Inc and home-appliance business to China’s Midea Group Co (美的集團) as it also considers letting go of PCs.
Toshiba’s PC business is in a position to make a profit independently after scaling back production and targeting enterprise clients, but the company is keeping its options for the division open, Tsunakawa said.
“So we’re now improving the PC business by ourselves, but all possibilities still remain on the table and we’re also considering partnerships at the same time,” he said.
Muromachi took over as president temporarily in July last year after three of his predecessors stepped down amid the accounting scandal.
Separately, Sharp Corp shares fell the most in almost two months yesterday on concerns that the Japanese company’s loss for the last fiscal year would be far wider than forecast.
The company might report a net loss of ¥300 billion (US$2.8 billion), a person familiar with the matter said, almost double the ¥161 billion that analysts expect on average.
The Osaka-based company, which Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) took control of this year in a US$3.5 billion deal, had previously forecast a ¥170 billion operating loss.
“We’re not at the stage where we can disclose net losses or net assets as we’re looking into a restructuring-related loss,” Sharp spokesman Toyodo Uemura said by telephone.
Sharp’s results are worsening every quarter as it sheds market share in businesses from appliances and solar equipment to flat panels for mobile devices.
Hon Hai, the main assembler of iPhones, hopes to reverse its fortunes by winning business from customers like Apple.
The Nikkei business daily first reported on Sharp’s likely net loss for the year based on a slowing display business and heavy extraordinary losses, without saying how it got the information.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last