TAKAHAMA: Toyota Industries Corp. President ITO Koichi apologized to shareholders on Tuesday for irregularities in engine testing.

“We are very sorry for the great inconvenience caused to shareholders and many other stakeholders,” Ito said at a general shareholders meeting in Takahama, Aichi Prefecture.

“We will do our best not to repeat such wrongdoing,” he said.

Meanwhile, a stockholder questioned the effectiveness of “token” measures to prevent similar misconduct, while another owner voiced concern over proposed assistance for preventive efforts from Toyota Motor Corp., which was newly found to have been involved in vehicle data-rigging to obtain type approval, necessary for mass production.

At the meeting, the company-proposed nominations of seven board members, including the reappointment of Ito, were approved.

In March last year, it came to light that Toyota Industries had cheated on exhaust gas performance tests for forklift engines.

Irregularities in automobile engine testing were also found at the company later.

As a result, the transport ministry canceled type approval for the maker’s industrial machinery engines, while Toyota Motor temporarily suspended shipments of its vehicles using the group company’s engines in question.

In the wake of a series of test fraud cases at not only Toyota Industries but other group firms, Toyota Motor Chairman TOYODA Akio in January said he would take the lead in rebuilding the group.

Toyoda also had expressed an intention to attend the shareholder meetings of 17 major group companies as an owner. However, he was absent from the Toyota Industries meeting, held ahead of the other firms.

A Toyota Motor public relations official said the automaker has concluded that it is inadvisable that Toyoda’s participation would cause a change at the annual shareholders meeting, which is supposed to be a once-a-year occasion of dialogue between the company and shareholders.

Toyoda will not appear as a shareholder at general shareholders meetings of any group companies, according to the official.

The day’s meeting was attended by 253 stockholders, up from the previous year’s 207, and lasted one hour and 21 minutes.

“We have no choice but to believe in (Toyota Industries) because it says it will make improvements over irregular acts,” a man in his 60s who attended the meeting said.

A man in his 80s, who said he had worked at Toyota Industries, said, “It’s a matter of course for both upper management and on-site workers to be careful (about irregularities).” The company “made only a superficial explanation,” he added.

JIJI Press