Toshiba shareholders vote to oust board chair — CEO

TOKYO, Japan — Toshiba shareholders on Friday rejected the reappointment of board chair Osamu Nagayama in a rebuke to management after revelations of attempts to sway voting on activist investor proposals.

CEO Satoshi Tsunakawa said shareholders had voted down a bid to reappoint Nagayama and a member of the firm's audit committee.

It came despite Tsunakawa offering his backing for the chairman of the board, and pledging to work on reestablishing trust after the damaging revelations of an independent probe.

Earlier this month, the inquiry found that the troubled industrial conglomerate "devised a plan to effectively prevent shareholders from exercising their shareholder proposal right and voting rights" at a meeting in July 2020.

The meeting, at which the activist shareholders' resolutions were rejected, was "not fairly managed", concluded their 140-page report.

It also detailed how Toshiba had pursued an intervention from Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI).

The probe was launched after shareholders alleging vote irregularities pushed Toshiba to hold an extraordinary off-schedule general meeting in March.

Toshiba's former CEO Nobuaki Kurumatani resigned in April after a buyout offer from a private equity fund with which he was associated stirred further turmoil within the company.

Toshiba was once a symbol of Japan's advanced technology and economic power but has lurched from scandals and losses to a recovery in recent years.