Posted on: Wednesday, June 22, 2005
Sony OKs its first foreign CEO
By Yuri Kageyama
Associated Press
TOKYO — Sony Corp. shareholders today approved Howard Stringer as the company's new chief executive, making him the first foreigner to head the Japanese electronics and entertainment corporation.
Shizuo Kamabayashi • Associated Press Foreign chief executives at major Japanese companies are still extremely rare. One exception is Brazilian-born Carlos Ghosn, head of Nissan Motor Co., who has become a hero here by reviving the automaker from near-collapse to growth in the past several years.
The vote came at a shareholders meeting in Tokyo, packed with more than 6,000 people at a Tokyo hotel.
During the two-hour meeting, Stringer, Idei and other executives were questioned by investors about how Sony planned a comeback at a time when its stock price has plunged to half of what it was five years ago.
Stringer reassured investors that he planned to engineer Sony's revival and work to deliver global stature to Sony although he may be a foreigner.
"I am first and foremost a Sony warrior," he said at the meeting, shown through monitors to reporters. "This is our destiny, and this is our responsibility."
Stringer faces an enormous challenge in turning around Sony, which has been hit with losses in its consumer electronics business amid competition from cheaper Asian rivals. It has been weighed down with restructuring costs while getting beaten in key growing sectors, such as portable music players like Apple Computer Inc.'s iPod.
Idei acknowledged he had underestimated the pervasive global changes in consumer electronics. "I was not able to read the changes," he said. "I feel my responsibility is heavy."
But Idei and other executives said Sony will return to its past glory because it still boasts first-rate technology and merely needs to do more to match that up with consumer trends and tastes.
The library of films Sony had acquired through its stake in MGM and Columbia will prove invaluable as digital content becomes more widespread in living rooms through digital broadcasting and next-generation DVDs, they said. And Sony was not mistaken in embarking on the strategy of linking entertainment with electronics.
"The question is not whether someone is Japanese or a foreigner," Idei said in defense of Stringer's appointment. "The more important question is that person's managerial competence and what kind of spirit he possesses."
Before joining Sony in 1997, Stringer had a 30-year career as a journalist, producer and executive at CBS Inc. His key role at Sony would be to develop strategic links between the entertainment and electronics business, a plan that Sony has discussed for years but has never fully realized.
Stringer, who was previously vice chairman at Sony and chief executive of Sony Corp. of America, speaks no Japanese. He took U.S. citizenship in 1985, becoming a dual British-American national. He will continue to live in New York, where he now resides, traveling between the United States and Japan, Sony said.
Stringer has said he will work closely with new President Ryoji Chubachi and Katsumi Ihara, chief financial officer, who are both Japanese and have years of experience in electronics.
A native of Wales who later acquired U.S. citizenship, Stringer, 63, has helped make Sony's music and movie business one of the company's few bright spots in recent years. He replaces Nobuyuki Idei, who led the Tokyo-based company for a decade.
Stockholders of Sony Corp. at their annual shareholders meeting yesterday in Tokyo approved the appointment of Welsh-born Howard Stringer as the new chief executive, the first foreigner to head Sony.
Typical of the critical sentiments was investor Shinji Takimoto, who asked why Idei was unable to produce results that lived up to the company's profit targets.
