In yet another major development as Sony winds down the current financial year (today), Masaru Kato departs after 31 years. Sony has appointed Kenichiro Yoshida to replace him starting April 1.

Kato was a Sony veteran having held several other high-profile positions within the company including Executive Vice President, Representative Corporate Executive Officer as well as Chief Executive Officer and Deputy President at Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.

Previous quarterly results show that Sony is projecting an annual loss for this financial year of 110bn yen ($1.06bn / €774m /  64.9bn). In the past few months Sony has sold key buildings and agreed to sell it’s PC brand VAIO to a recovery firm as well as decided to separate the TV business as a fully owned subsidiary. This change of senior management at the year-end continues the trend of taking action to stabilise finances.

A Sony spokesperson Yo Kikuchi commented:

 After discussing the matter over the last four months, we decided it would be appropriate to appoint Yoshida at the beginning of the new financial year…

We had already been considering a succession plan and Yoshida had been appointed deputy CFO last December 1. 

Kato worked within Sony Corp. for 31 years but worked for a Sony affiliate company, So-net, an Internet service provider.

Discuss:

Is Sony doing enough to stabilise finances? Who left whom here?

[Via Reuters]