Toyota shares rise with executive news

TOKYO, Jan. 20 (UPI) -- Toyota Motor Co. shares climbed 1.3 percent as the company said its next president would be a member of the company's founding family.

The new president, Akio Toyoda, who will take over in June, is the grandson of the company's founder Kiichiro Toyoda. He has served as an executive vice president in charge of North America and is known as an aggressive cost-cutter, The New York Times reported Tuesday.

Toyoda earned a master's degree in business at Babson College in Massachusetts and is fluent in English.

In an interview last year, Toyoda compared his work to that of a chef.

"I want to be the owner-chef" -- with knowledge not just of its vehicles but their ingredients, he said.

Toyoda will succeed Katsuaki Watanabe, who will take a vice chairman post, while Fujio Cho stays on as chairman.

Toyota said in December it would lose $1.7 billion in its fiscal year ending in March.

But, change at Toyota would still be slow, a company observer said.

"There is not one emperor at Toyota, but five or 10 emperors," Koji Endo, an analyst at Credit Suisse Securities.

"Nothing will change drastically in the first couple of years," Endo said.