Taizo Nishimuro, Ex-Toshiba CEO dead at 81
Taizo Nishimuro, a titan of Japan’s business establishment who ran three most important companies including Toshiba, exemplified both the good and bad, died last week at the age of 81.
He streamlined Toshiba’s semiconductor business which struggled as the home appliance market slumped. He also chaired an advisory panel to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe that put forward recommendations on Abe’s statement to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II in August 2015.
A serial dealmaker, with abundant business experience outside Japan, and who has a passion for overseas expansion, Nishimuro was both extolled and disparaged for his efforts to transform Toshiba, Japan Post, and the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
His critics, however, said he represented one of the factors of holding Japan back: an aging business leader who commanded an outsized influence over Japan. He once said, “ Management is a science and being a CEO is an art.”
He Toshiba as a trainee after graduating in economics from Tokyo’s prestigious Keio University and was responsible in the four decades for restructuring one of Japan’s most storied conglomerates with a management system designed to devolve responsibility and to accelerate a notorious slow decision-making process. His achievement was pure iconoclastic.
In 2005 he became chairman of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. His final presidency job at Japan Post was politically toxic, with interference. When Japan Post finally pulled off its gigantic public offering in 2015 and concluded the most tortured privatisation in Japan’s history, Nishimuro’s role of reassuring face for the share sale.