Biography | Kenichiro Yoshida — The April Morning He Took Sony's Chair at Konan

People treat a Japanese electronics succession as a closed-room affair.

This one was announced from the headquarters that already stood at 1-7-1 Konan.

On 2 February 2018 Sony's board named Kenichiro Yoshida president and chief executive officer, effective 1 April 2018.

Kazuo Hirai, president since April 2012, would become chairman on the same date.

The press release went out from this address, Sony City, the cube completed in 2006 and used as headquarters after the 2007 move from Gotenyama.

Hirai had put the nomination to the Nominating Committee.

The board approved it the same day.

Yoshida was then fifty-eight, executive deputy president and chief financial officer, and one year older than the man he succeeded.

He had come back from So-net in December 2013 as chief strategy officer and deputy CFO, taken the CFO seat in April 2014, and added the deputy-president title in April 2015.

Reporters were briefed at the Tokyo headquarters.

The two men appeared together there.

The new mid-range plan was scheduled to start on the same April morning as the title change.

Sony City is a public corporate headquarters, five minutes from the Konan exit of Shinagawa Station, not a private residence.

The pin is the building from which the appointment was issued and at which the job began.

In April 2023 the president title moved to Hiroki Totoki while Yoshida remained chairman and CEO.

In April 2025 Totoki took the CEO seat as well, and Yoshida stayed as representative executive officer and chairman.

The Konan cube is still the group's registered head office.

Photo: Tyvic, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Portrait: U.S. Department of State, public domain.