According to Autonews, the American division of Suzuki announced on Tuesday that Koichi Suzuki will return American Suzuki Motor Corp. in the position of executive vice president in charge of automotive operations. Koichi Suzuki, age 45, has led the Suzuki division in the United States through April 2007, but he had to return to Japan afterwards.
He is currently group leader responsible for North American marketing in Japan but starting with January 28, he will take his newly-appointed position in America. With the return of Koichi Suzuki as executive vice president in charge of automotive operations, the current holder of the position, Mark Harano, will return to Japan to oversee Asian markets.
In fact, this is not the only modification in the management board Suzuki Motor Corp has made in the past months. As we reported in December, Osamu Suzuki, the current Chairman and Chief Executive of Suzuki, returned as president of the Japanese carmaker. He replaced Hiroshi Tsuda who had retired for medical reasons.
For the moment, we don't have any details about the reasons of the replacement, but we will provide further details as soon as we hear them. All we can say for now is that Suzuki didn't score promising results in the United States in 2008 and therefore, it is probably reconsidering its sales strategies.
Last year, Suzuki managed to sell 84,865 vehicles in the U.S., down 16.7 percent from 2007.
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