On the occasion of his third service anniversary Koji Sato will resign CEO of Toyota be replaced by the current CFO Kenta Kon.
Sato-san (above) remains with the company and on the board, but moves into the newly created role of Chief Industry Officer. He was recently appointed Chairman of the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association (JAMA) and has been Vice Chairman of the Japan Business Federation since mid-2025.
According to Toyota, in these roles, Sato-san will “accelerate practical cooperation initiatives in the (automotive) industry to strengthen international competitiveness” and “advance (cross-industry) cooperation to improve Japan’s industrial competitiveness.”
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Kenta Kon, currently Toyota’s chief financial officer, will take on the role of CEO. The company says “improving the company’s profitability… and reducing break-even volumes are (its) immediate priorities” and is tasked with “driving reforms across the company, not through functional segmentation, but by looking at the value chain as a whole.”
He joined Toyota in 1991 after earning a bachelor’s degree in economics from Tohoku University. Kon-san slowly rose through the ranks and became general manager of the accounting department in 2017.
Since then, he has held senior positions in general administration, human resources, advanced engineering, and research and development. In 2020, he became the automaker’s chief financial officer (CFO). He will be replaced as CFO by Yoichi Miyazaki.
In a statement, the company said the changes will “accelerate management decision-making in response to changes in the internal and external environment and create a structure that will enable Toyota to fully achieve its mission of contributing to society through industry.”
All of these leadership changes will take place on April 1, three years to the day after Sato-san took over as CEO from Akio Toyoda, the grandson of the automaker’s founder and one of the most colorful automotive bosses in Japan’s recent history.
At the time, Toyota said Sato-san had been tasked with “transforming Toyota into a mobility company.” Industry observers said he was also tasked with accelerating the company’s electric vehicle development efforts as Toyoda-san has shied away from introducing any form of electrification beyond hybrid and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.
Today’s boardroom changes come as a bit of a surprise, as the automaker confirmed last weekend that it would have sold 11.2 million cars in 2025. With sales increasing by 4.8 percent, Toyota became the world’s most popular new car manufacturer for the sixth time in a row.
This week it also raised its profit forecast for the fiscal year ending March 2026 to 3.57 trillion yen (A$32.8 billion).
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