{"id":398144,"date":"2018-02-04T10:04:36","date_gmt":"2018-02-04T10:04:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=398144"},"modified":"2018-02-04T10:04:36","modified_gmt":"2018-02-04T10:04:36","slug":"sony-chief-executive-kazuo-hirai-step","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=398144","title":{"rendered":"Sony chief executive Kazuo Hirai to step down"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"story-body__introduction\">Sony&#8217;s chief executive Kazuo Hirai is stepping down and handing the reins over to finance chief Kenichiro Yoshida.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Yoshida, Sony&#8217;s chief financial officer, is to take over control of the Japanese electronics giant from 1 April.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Hirai will remain at Sony as chairman.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Yoshida and Mr Hirai have been instrumental in turning Sony around to focus on smartphone image sensors.<\/p>\n<p>Under their efforts, the Japanese electronic giant sold off its struggling PC business and launched the successful PlayStation 4 video game console, which has sold more than 60 million units to date.<\/p>\n<p>Sony said its profits quadrupled in the three months to December.<\/p>\n<p>The Japanese electronics giant reported a record profit of 351 billion yen ($3.2bn, \u00a32.5bn) for the quarter, compared with 92.4 billion yen in the same period the year before.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;As the company approaches a crucial juncture, when we will embark on a new mid-range plan, I consider this to be the ideal time to pass the baton of leadership to new management, for the future of Sony and also for myself to embark on a new chapter in my life,&#8221; said Mr Hirai in a statement.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Yoshida said he wanted to build on the management foundation created under Mr Hirai&#8217;s leadership to &#8220;improve Sony&#8217;s competitiveness as a global company&#8221;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sony&#8217;s chief executive Kazuo Hirai is stepping down and handing the reins over to finance chief Kenichiro Yoshida. Mr Yoshida, Sony&#8217;s chief financial officer, is to take over control of the Japanese electronics giant from 1 April. Mr Hirai will remain at Sony as chairman. Mr Yoshida and Mr Hirai have been instrumental in turning [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":398145,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[106],"tags":[16793,16792],"class_list":["post-398144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-japanese-brand","tag-sony-ceo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=398144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398144\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/398145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=398144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=398144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=398144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}