pFiled under: a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/hirings-firings/" rel="tag"Hirings/Firings/Layoffs/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/toyota/" rel="tag"Toyota/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/earnings-financials/" rel="tag"Earnings/Financials/a/pa href="http://www.autoblog.com/2009/01/20/founders-grandson-to-succeed-watanabe-as-toyota-president/"img vspace="4" hspace="4" border="1" align="right" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2009/01/akio-toyoda-280.jpg" alt="Akio Toyoda headshot" //aIt's official - there will soon be a Toyoda back at the helm of Toyota. Akio Toyoda, the grandson of company founder Kiichiro Toyoda a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2009/01/09/all-in-the-family-toyoda-grandson-to-take-top-job/"had been rumored/a as the likely pick to succeed current president Katsuaki Watanabe, but only now has the company given official word that the torch will be passed this June.br /br /In addition to bringing the company back under family control, Toyoda's ascendancy is important for a number of reasons. Toyoda brings with him both experience (he has been an executive vice president since 2005) and a youthful energy. At age 53, he'll be the youngest president in Toyota history, and he brings with him a resume that includes time in China and a school and work history here in the States.br /br /Toyoda takes over a marque that finds itself in unfamiliar territory, having had its global sales slip by a href="http://www.freep.com/article/20090120/BUSINESS01/90120020/Toyota+global+sales+fall+4++in+2008"four percent/a in 2008 in the midst of growing worldwide financial crisis. He is expected to consider more production outside of Japan to avoid the strong yen and pricy local materials, but it is likely that he will look over the viability of every aspect of the business, from marketing to motorsports to product and production. span style="font-style: italic;"Click through a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2009/01/20/founders-grandson-to-succeed-watanabe-as-toyota-president/"to the jump/a for a chart of the executive changes happening at Toyota./spanbr style="font-style: italic;" /br /[Sources: Toyota; a href="http://www.autonews.com/article/20090120/COPY01/301209904/1117"Automotive News/a, sub req'd.]pa href="http://www.autoblog.com/2009/01/20/founders-grandson-to-succeed-watanabe-as-toyota-president/" rel="bookmark"Continue reading emFounder's grandson to succeed Watanabe as Toyota President/em/a/pp style="padding:5px;background:#ddd;border:1px solid #ccc;clear:both;"a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2009/01/20/founders-grandson-to-succeed-watanabe-as-toyota-president/"Founder's grandson to succeed Watanabe as Toyota President/a originally appeared on a href="http://www.autoblog.com"Autoblog/a on Tue, 20 Jan 2009 16:58:00 EST. Please see our a href="http://www.weblogsinc.com/feed-terms/"terms for use of feeds/a./ph6 style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"/h6a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2009/01/20/founders-grandson-to-succeed-watanabe-as-toyota-president/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.autoblog.com/forward/1435174/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2009/01/20/founders-grandson-to-succeed-watanabe-as-toyota-president/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/5dO-neH9UCwYhgPtNIrc6Xz8aQo/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/5dO-neH9UCwYhgPtNIrc6Xz8aQo/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?a=6ZZllbRt"img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?i=6ZZllbRt" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?a=saeFUcmN"img src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?i=saeFUcmN" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/~r/weblogsinc/autoblog/~4/pNoFRfMdt3k" height="1" width="1"/

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