Toyota replaces CEO Koji Sato after just three years

On his third anniversary in the job Koji Sato will step aside CEO of Toyota to be replaced by the current chief financial officer Kenta Kon.

Sato-san (above) will remain with the company and on its board, but will shift across to the newly created role of chief industry officer. He was recently appointed as the chairman of Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association (JAMA), and since the middle of 2025 has been vice chair of the Japan Business Federation.

Toyota says in those roles Sato-san will “accelerate practical initiatives for [automotive] industry collaboration to strengthen international competitiveness”, as well as “advance [cross-]industry collaboration to enhance Japan’s industrial competitiveness”.

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Stepping up to the role of CEO will be Kenta Kon, who is currently Toyota’s chief financial officer. The company says “improving the company’s earning power … and lowering the break-even volume are [his] immediate priorities”, and is tasked “to lead reforms across the entire company, not through functional segmentation but by addressing the value chain as a whole”.

After completing a bachelor of economics at Tohoku University, he joined Toyota in 1991. Kon-san slowly rose through the ranks to become general manager of the accounting division by 2017.

Since then he’s had senior roles overseeing general administration, human resources, advanced engineering, and research and development. In 2020 he became the automaker’s chief financial officer (CFO). He will be replaced as CFO by Yoichi Miyazaki.

In a statement, the company said the changes will “accelerate management decision-making in response to changes in the internal and external environment and to establish a structure that will enable Toyota to fully carry out its mission of contributing to society through industry”.

All these leadership changes will take place on April 1, three years to the day after Sato-san took over as CEO from Akio Toyoda, grandson of the car maker’s founder, and one of the most colourful automotive bosses in Japan’s recent history.

At the time Toyota said Sato-san had been given a “mission to transform Toyota into a mobility company”. Industry observers believed he was also tasked with speeding up the company’s EV development efforts as Toyoda-san had been reluctant to adopt any form of electrification beyond hybrid and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.

Today’s boardroom changes come as a bit of a surprise with the automaker confirming last weekend that it sold 11.2 million cars in 2025. The 4.8 per cent increase in sales saw Toyota become the world’s most popular new car manufacturer for the sixth year running.

This week it also revised up its profit forecast for the financial year ending March 2026 to ¥3.57 trillion (A$32.8 billion).

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