ELECTRONICS ENTERPRISE
Falling fortunes
Toshiba’s fortunes have fallen since the March 11, 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, when a tsunami in northeastern Japan sent three reactors into meltdown. Toshiba is involved with the costly and precarious decommissioning effort, which will take decades.
The company’s reputation was also tarnished by an accounting scandal, which involved books being doctored for years.
The company has also seen managerial upheaval. Last year, Nobuaki Kurumatani abruptly resigned as Toshiba president. Kurumatani had headed global fund CVC Capital Partners’ Japan operations before joining Toshiba in 2018.
Kurumatani was replaced by Satoshi Tsunakawa, a veteran at Toshiba, who
This Feb. 19, 2022 file photo shows the logo of Toshiba Corp. at its building in Kawasaki, near Tokyo. served as chief executive officer from 2016. Tsunakawa recently announced his resignation, though he remained as chairman.
Taro Shimada, an executive officer and corporate senior vice president, was tapped as president in an interim move. Shimada was an executive at Siemens, both in Japan and the United States, before joining Toshiba’s digital operations in 2018.
If approved at a regular shareholders’ meeting in June, Shimada will become Toshiba’s first chief executive with a background in digital technology.
“We will take into consideration the opinions of the shareholders and will continue to study how we can boost the value of our company,” Shimada told shareholders on Thursday.
Founded in 1875, Toshiba was a manufacturing pioneer for everything from electric rice cookers to laptop computers. It also invented flash memory, but that division was sold off as its fortunes tumbled.
Toshiba acquired Westinghouse of the US in 2006 with much fanfare, making nuclear power a key part of its business. Westinghouse went bankrupt in 2017, saddling Toshiba with huge red ink at that time. Toshiba sold Westinghouse in 2018.