English, an experienced consumer electronics executive joined Toshiba in August 2013 from Harvey Norman, where he was General Manager of OFIS responsible for overseeing the daily operation of the mass retailer’s business. Including all financial aspects (P&L), staffing, marketing, purchasing and business Strategy.
Speaking to ChannelNews at a major Intel function last night, English said that he was not taking up another role and that he was “considering his future”.
Toshiba who has exited the consumer market in several Countries during the past year, including the Taiwanese market earlier this month has denied that Australia is facing a restructure with the Company resorting to only competing in the B2B market.
A replacement for English who was responsible for the sales operations for Toshiba Australia and New Zealand for retail personnel computers. Including sales, marketing, product development as well as working with a major retail partners across the two countries has not been announced.
According to Japanese sources Toshiba is considering a total exit from the PC market. In recent months the Company has been negotiating with Taiwanese manufacturers in an effort to cut the cost of their notebooks.
In the past Toshiba’s notebook orders were split between Compal and Inventec now the Company is finalising deals with Taiwan based Quanta and Pegatron Technology to manufacture their core 15″ notebooks in an effort to cut costs.
Recently Toshiba’s president and seven other directors were forced to resign when an investigation revealed that the firm had doctored the books and had padded its profits over the past seven years to the tune of $1.8 Billion.
The case is one of Japan’s biggest corporate scandals in years.
Suspecting accounting irregularities at Toshiba, the Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission under the financial watchdog Financial Service Agency launched a probe in February.
Realizing the seriousness of the issue, Toshiba decided to set up an in-house investigative committee in April, when the firm publicly announced its accounting troubles.
The irregularities apparently went deeper than the firm initially believed; thus it handed the investigation over to an independent outside committee in May and said that it would postpone reporting its fiscal 2014 earnings.
The committee compiled a nearly 300-page report and submitted it to Toshiba on July 20.
In one instance, Toshiba out-sourced the manufacturing of computers to a partner. Toshiba would sell computer parts to the partner, who would then assemble the computers, which it would then buy back.
The company’s computer division would sell more parts than necessary to the partners, which increased that company’s inventory, allowing Toshiba to inflate its profit figures.
According to the report, the pressure the presidents placed on their subordinates to show a profit were immense.
For example, in September, 2012, the digital product and service division of Toshiba, which includes its computer business, told the then-President Sasaki that it would post a ?24.8 billion operating loss for the first half of the fiscal year.
But Sasaki refused to accept the forecast and told the division to improve its profit by ?12 billion in just three days.
In September, 2013, then-President Tanaka told a senior vice president that he wanted to have a “secret talk.” He asked the vice president to improve a loss at the digital product and service division by padding the numbers.
The vice president told Tanaka he was personally opposed to doing so, but if Tanaka decided, he would support it.
How did Toshiba react to the committee’s report?
At a news conference on July 21, then-President Tanaka apologized and resigned from the post. The company also announced that then-Vice Chairman Sasaki and Adviser Nishida were resigning, as were six other directors.
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