Nidec founder and chairman Nagamori quits board after spate of accounting issues

The 81-year-old has voluntarily resigned his post, the world’s largest maker of mini-motors says

Nidec said its founder Shigenobu Nagamori will step down from his position as chairman of the board, following the discovery of a series of accounting issues dating back years.

The 81-year-old has voluntarily resigned his post, the world’s largest maker of mini-motors said in a statement. Nagamori stepped down from the role of chief executive officer in 2024, but continued to hold representative rights and remained on the board. Nidec’s current CEO Mitsuya Kishida will take his place.

Born in 1944, Nagamori built Nidec into a US$15 billion company with aggressive tactics that included hostile takeovers – a rarity in Japan. But his growth-at-all-costs approach is under scrutiny following a growing number of suspected cases of improper accounting.

In October, the Tokyo Stock Exchange put Nidec on notice for a potential delisting, unless it can erase concerns over corporate governance. Moody’s Ratings downgraded the company while warning that further downgrade risks remained.

The Kyoto-based company had struggled to secure a successor for its ageing founder, who has been openly critical of candidates, even of those he personally poached from other companies.

In 2022, he retook the reins of the company just a year after relinquishing them to Jun Seki, formerly a rising star at Nissan Motor Seki left the company shortly thereafter.

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Founded in 1973, Nidec grew from a tiny operation in a shack next to a farmhouse to a global enterprise spanning the automotive and electronic sectors. In an interview with Bloomberg in 2022, Nagamori said that it hurt to hand off Nidec and see it stumble.

“I built this company from the ground up, and Nidec is like a part of my body,” he said. “If the company were to become a failure it’d be like a physical wound for me.” BLOOMBERG

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