TOKYO — Nobuaki Kurumatani will step down as CEO of Toshiba amid declining trust in his leadership both at the company and among investors, Nikkei learned Tuesday.
Kurumatani’s successor will be Chairman Satoshi Tsunakawa, who preceded him as president and has maintained friendlier relationships with activist investors.
The embattled chief executive is expected to announce his decision Wednesday at a meeting of Toshiba’s board.
The abrupt change in leadership comes about a week after an estimated $20 billion proposal by private equity firm CVC Capital Partners to take the Japanese industrial group private.
A Toshiba spokesperson said the company has not announced any date or agenda for a board meeting.
The company has already decided to set up a cross-department team to consider CVC’s bid once a formal proposal is made.
Toshiba’s nomination committee has pushed for a change in leadership. Kurumatani previously chaired CVC’s Japanese operations, raising concerns about the potential for conflicts of interest. He has clashed with shareholders over governance and accounting scandals at subsidiaries.
Internally, more than half of senior managers expressed a lack of confidence in Kurumatani in a survey conducted by the company’s nominating committee. The poll showed a steep drop in support from employees compared with a year earlier, fueling speculation about his future.
In an annual general meeting last year, a proposal to keep Kurumatani in his post squeaked by with just 57% support. The vote sparked controversy as top shareholder Effissimo Capital Management accused Toshiba of putting “undue pressure” on investors to vote in Kurumatani’s favor or not at all.
Kurumatani was appointed as CEO in 2018, as the Japanese blue chip’s first outside leader in more than half a century, to turn Toshiba around from a yearslong crisis stemming from accounting fraud and massive losses at a U.S. nuclear subsidiary. He arrived the year after a 600 billion yen ($5.5 billion at current rates) capital increase that left the company with roughly 70% foreign ownership, setting the stage for its struggles with activist shareholders.
Under his leadership, the company shed assets and returned to the Tokyo Stock Exchange’s first section this past January after being demoted to the market’s second tier.
Tsunakawa joined Toshiba in 1979 and held positions including vice president before becoming president in 2016 and chairman in 2020.
