Founder's grandson Akio Toyoda to head Toyota

20 January 2009

Akio Toyoda, 52, will take over from Katsuaki Watanabe, 66 as president of Toyota later this year in June. Toyoda who is currently chief executive is the grandson of founder  Kiichiro Toyoda.

With the global financial crisis driving down car sales to the lowest depths in decades thzat forced Toyota to announce its first loss in 70 Years (See: Toyota makes first annual loss in seven decades), Toyoda will have his hands full keeping the company afloat. According to a top analyst, given the bad environment, he will have a very difficult time and he can't be expected to work miracles in a very short period of time. 

''The change in the world economy is of a magnitude that comes once every hundred years,'' Toyota's president, Katsuaki Watanabe, told a news conference in Nagoya, Japan, near the company's Toyota City headquarters last December. Sales last month dropped ''far faster, wider and deeper than expected.'' Calling the current environment ''extremely tough'', he said that the company was ''facing an unprecedented emergency situation'' and admitted that it ''can't see the bottom''.

Toyoda's priority would like be the US market. Industry-wide car sales are expected to fall to around 10 million down 3.2 million from 2008 sales figures which were the lowest in 16 years.

With the falling market Toyta's manufacturing facilities are saddled with excess capacity.  The company's San Antonio pickup plant commenced  making full-size Tundras in late 2006, just as gasoline prices started rising. The demand for such trucks plunged in both 2007 and 2008.

Sales in the US, traditionally its most profitable market, plunged 34 per cent in November and European sales dropped 34 per cent.