Shoei Utsuda
Profile
Performance in office
Tenure
Tenure
Background
He joined the company in 1967 and built his career in machinery. He became Director and General Manager of Machinery and Information Planning in June 1997, Representative Director, Managing Director and General Manager of Corporate Administration in June 2000, and in April 2002 Senior Managing Executive Officer serving as CSO and head of the Business Transformation Unit, becoming President in October of that year. He is a career employee who worked both on the sales front line and in company-wide administration.
Selection
In October 2002 he succeeded Shinjiro Shimizu as President. On July 3 of that year the Special Investigation Department of the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office arrested three employees over bid rigging for a diesel power plant on Kunashiri Island, and even after two were indicted on July 24 his predecessor had denied that he would resign to take responsibility. The fact that the internal investigation was handled by a committee at the business unit level rather than the company-wide compliance committee drew criticism, and the change put in place a Senior Managing Executive Officer who had headed company-wide administration.
Initiatives
He sent internal auditors into subsidiaries once every three to four years and held repeated roundtable meetings with frontline employees. He made thorough compliance the top priority, and these efforts came after expanding the internal audit system; the misconduct the company disclosed on November 22, 2004, was itself uncovered by those audits. It had obtained designated approval from the Tokyo Metropolitan Government for DPF devices, which remove particulate matter from exhaust gas, while submitting false data, and a business that had sold more than 20,000 units worth ¥19.4 billion in total and held the top market share suddenly became a burden whose replacement costs threatened to exceed its sales of about ¥20.0 billion.
Career
Career
Mitsui &
| Date | Position |
|---|---|
| Apr 1967 | Joined |
| Jun 1997 | Director, Head of Machinery and Information, General Manager |
| Jun 2000 | Representative Director, Managing Director and General Manager, Operations Department |
| Apr 2002 | 代表取締役、 専務執行役員、 CSO(業務部門長)、 業態変革本部長 (translation pending) |
| Oct 2002 | Representative Director, President |
| Apr 2009 | Stepped down as President |