Japanese companies need to elevate young people and women and promote risk-taking to boost the nation’s economy, Sony Corp chairman Howard Stringer said.
Companies in the nation, including electronics makers, suffer from a lack of flexibility and need to make it easier for young people and women to contribute and be promoted, the executive said in a speech at an economic conference in Tokyo yesterday.
“Lose them, and you lose the future,” Stringer said. “People’s attitudes have to shift.”
MORITA
Entrepreneurs such as Facebook Inc founder Mark Zuckerberg, 28, and Akio Morita, who was 25 when he co-founded Sony, demonstrate how young people can drive innovation when they are encouraged to take risks, Stringer said.
Sony took “small” steps to elevate women while Stringer was chief executive officer, he said. The company named Nicole Seligman president of Sony Corp of America in March, giving her oversight of areas including legal affairs and communications.
Stringer stepped down as CEO of Tokyo-based Sony in April, making way for Kazuo Hirai to lead Japan’s largest exporter of consumer electronics.
The company aims to return to profit this fiscal year for the first time since 2008, after posting a record loss of ￥457 billion (US$5.7 billion) in the year ended March 31 amid falling prices and the strong yen.
STRINGER
Stringer, who holds master’s and bachelor’s degrees in history from Oxford University, joined Sony in 1997 after a career spanning two decades at US television company CBS Corp.
The Welsh-born US citizen became chairman and chief executive in 2005.
TEMPORARY TRUCE: China has made concessions to ease rare earth trade controls, among others, while Washington holds fire on a 100% tariff on all Chinese goods China is effectively suspending implementation of additional export controls on rare earth metals and terminating investigations targeting US companies in the semiconductor supply chain, the White House announced. The White House on Saturday issued a fact sheet outlining some details of the trade pact agreed to earlier in the week by US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) that aimed to ease tensions between the world’s two largest economies. Under the deal, China is to issue general licenses valid for exports of rare earths, gallium, germanium, antimony and graphite “for the benefit of US end users and their suppliers
Dutch chipmaker Nexperia BV’s China unit yesterday said that it had established sufficient inventories of finished goods and works-in-progress, and that its supply chain remained secure and stable after its parent halted wafer supplies. The Dutch company suspended supplies of wafers to its Chinese assembly plant a week ago, calling it “a direct consequence of the local management’s recent failure to comply with the agreed contractual payment terms,” Reuters reported on Friday last week. Its China unit called Nexperia’s suspension “unilateral” and “extremely irresponsible,” adding that the Dutch parent’s claim about contractual payment was “misleading and highly deceptive,” according to a statement
The Chinese government has issued guidance requiring new data center projects that have received any state funds to only use domestically made artificial intelligence (AI) chips, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. In recent weeks, Chinese regulatory authorities have ordered such data centers that are less than 30 percent complete to remove all installed foreign chips, or cancel plans to purchase them, while projects in a more advanced stage would be decided on a case-by-case basis, the sources said. The move could represent one of China’s most aggressive steps yet to eliminate foreign technology from its critical infrastructure amid a
Nissan Motor Co has agreed to sell its global headquarters in Yokohama for ￥97 billion (US$630 million) to a group sponsored by Taiwanese autoparts maker Minth Group (敏實集團), as the struggling automaker seeks to shore up its financial position. The acquisition is led by a special purchase company managed by KJR Management Ltd, a Japanese real-estate unit of private equity giant KKR & Co, people familiar with the matter said. KJR said it would act as asset manager together with Mizuho Real Estate Management Co. Nissan is undergoing a broad cost-cutting campaign by eliminating jobs and shuttering plants as it grapples
RSS