2012

Kazuhiro Tsuga becomes the president of Panasonic Corporation

Senior Managing Director Tsuga (right) and President Ohtsubo (left)
joining their hands at the conference announcing the new president

In June 2012, Senior Managing Director Kazuhiro Tsuga took the president's chair. Accordingly, President Fumio Ohtsubo became the chairman and Chairman Kunio Nakamura an executive advisor.

At the press conference announcing the new president on June 28, Tsuga announced the basic policy to promote business in consideration of customer needs based on the system with a business unit (BU) as the basic unit of management and to that end, energize BUs. He also shared a plan to review the head office's roles and divide it into the corporate strategic head office in charge of group-wide strategy planning and a sector in charge of supporting business promotion. Further, as the basic direction to take, he expounded how Panasonic will globally offer solutions in the B2C and B2B fields through 4 touch points with customers whom Panasonic serves, specifically, "Residential," "Non-residential " (offices, stores, etc.), "Personal" (consumer electronics, etc.), and "Mobility" (value of portability). Tsuga shared his thought by saying, "We are not to self-righteously conduct business with no regard for the expectations of customers. In this context, we must promptly clarify what our customers really expect from us."

Four months into his presidency, a press conference to announce the second quarter financial results took place in October in the midst of an extremely harsh financial condition, where Tsuga expressed a stance to take every possible measure to generate cash flow and starting in April 2013, promote the BU-based management under the 4-Company system to be newly launched.