Sony shareholders yesterday approved a new management setup at the Japanese electronics and entertainment company that would center power around chief executive Howard Stringer and a team of younger executives.
They approved 15 directors, including Welsh-born American Stringer, the first foreigner to head Sony, who is taking on an additional title of president as well as serving as chairman and chief executive.
Ryoji Chubachi, who has resigned as president, will remain a director. He will become vice chairman overseeing product quality and environment policies and take a more supportive role.
Another part of Sony’s new management reshuffle, which has gained public attention recently, is the appointment of Masao Morita, the son of Sony co-founder Akio Morita, as the head of the company’s music and movies operations in Japan.
Sony has been no exception among Japan’s export-reliant manufacturers in racking up huge losses for the fiscal year that ended in March — its first annual net loss in 14 years and its first ever caused by red ink in its core electronics business.
The company is expecting an even bigger loss for the fiscal year through March 2010, as it gets hammered by sliding global demand, a strong yen and declining gadget prices.
At an annual shareholders meeting in Tokyo, attended by more than 8,300 investors, Stringer sought to allay investor fears about the future of the company that makes the Walkman music player and PlayStation 3 game machines.
Stringer told shareholders the company was on track to restructure its operations and cut costs by ¥300 billion (US$3.1 billion) this year, as he had promised earlier.
The company is eliminating 16,000 jobs, shutting factories and reducing the number of its suppliers to cope with the global recession.
Stringer, 67, is heading a team of four younger executives, three of them in their 40s — including Kazuo Hirai, 48, head of Sony’s game unit — to spearhead efforts to bring together Sony’s sprawling empire, spanning TVs, games, movies and semiconductors, to develop products and services for the digital age.
“We’re seeing steady progress,” Stringer told shareholders.
Sony aims to marry “brilliant hardware engineers” with “equally strong software,” Stringer said.
He wants to avoid losing out to rivals’ products with better, more advanced functions, as Apple Inc achieved with its iPod music player and Amazon.com Inc did with its Kindle book reader, he said.
“We are not going to be beaten again in the network age,” Stringer said. “This is our challenge and our opportunity and this is why we made the structural change. We have not finished, we have a long way to go.”
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