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.
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