TOKYO – “You should have smiled! Then it would have been perfect,” jested outgoing Toyota Motor chief Akio Toyoda in a hot mic moment after unveiling his successor Koji Sato in January.
“I was so nervous!” replied Mr Sato, whose 53 years of age makes him relatively young by Japanese standards to lead a conglomerate – let alone Japan’s most valuable company worth 30.3 trillion yen (S$300.3 billion) at market close last Friday.
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