TOKYO: Japan's advertising giant Dentsu Inc. has named Toshihiro Yamamoto as the successor to president and chief executive officer Tadashi Ishii after a year plagued by scandal.
Dentsu convened a meeting of its board of directors Thursday to determine the resignation of Ishii as a representative director and president & CEO, and to select Shoichi Nakamoto (currently director and senior executive vice president & CFO) and Yoshio Takada (currently director and executive vice president) as representative director and senior executive vice president & CFO and representative director and executive vice president respectively, and to select Toshihiro Yamamoto (currently senior vice president) as president and CEO.
These changes will become effective on January 23.
Dentsu had announced in December that Ishii, 65, would be stepping down in January from the top job at Japan’s biggest advertising agency after almost six years at the helm to take responsibility for the Christmas Day 2015 suicide of an employee who had worked excessive hours.
Ishii’s move came after the Tokyo Labour Bureau said in late December it would refer the company and officials who manage working hours to prosecutors. The world’s fifth-largest advertising agency holding group said in November it was cooperating with a Japanese Labour Ministry probe after a 24-year-old employee’s suicide in the previous year was ruled as related to excessive overtime.
Last December's development's only added to another scandal that enveloped Dentsu in 2016 when the agency admitted in September it was investigating 200,000 transactions for evidence of overcharging clients.
Its disclosure, which was accompanied by a public bow of apology from the group’s head of digital advertising, threatened to shatter the reputation of a company once widely viewed as beyond reproach.
Dentsu’s internal investigation was triggered by a complaint from Toyota in July 2016 and later dragged it into a series of uncomfortable discussions with 1,810 Japanese clients who use its digital advertising services.
Ishii "will now hand over his responsibilities to the successor representative directors and president & CEO and fulfill his accountability to shareholders until the expiration of his term as director (the conclusion of Dentsu's annual shareholders meeting to be held in March 2017)", Dentsu said in a statement.
Commenting on his elevation to CEO, Yamamoto said: "My mission is to re-establish trust in Dentsu in Japan, and build a sustainable growth path for the long term. I believe it will become a reality with the improvements we are making to create a more flexible working environment where our diverse talents will thrive to help create value for our clients and professional fulfilment for our people."
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