Support Rate Hits New Low

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Author | Wang Lei, Liu Yajie | Editor | Qin Zhangyong

No surprise, Akio Toyoda successfully re-elected as Toyota's chairman.

Yesterday, at Toyota's headquarters in Aichi, Japan, Toyota held a shareholders' meeting, where an important decision was made to re-appoint Akio Toyoda (Akio Toyoda) as the chairman of Toyota Motor Corporation.

In addition, other nine board members, including Toyota Motor President Koji Sato and two executive vice presidents Hiroki Nakajima and Yoichi Miyazaki, were also successfully re-elected.

Although Akio Toyoda was re-elected, the shareholder voting rate was the lowest ever. According to foreign media, the shareholder voting rate was only 72%, while in the previous two years, Akio Toyoda's voting rate could reach up to 96%.

And the most troubling thing for Toyota is that recent fraud incidents and overseas investors' doubts about Akio Toyoda are rampant, and Akio Toyoda was re-elected as chairman under this background.

Even though many investors opposed it, Toyota still chose Akio Toyoda from the results.

01 Voting Rate Hits New Low

Faced with this result, the outside world actually already had an idea in mind.

At this Toyota shareholders' meeting, a total of 4,656 shareholders attended, and the meeting lasted approximately 1 hour and 50 minutes. Although the details of the voting have not been announced, Toyota said that 10 directors, including the re-election of Akio Toyoda as chairman, and 3 proposals proposed by Toyota, including the re-election of directors, were all passed with more than half of the votes.

Behind this seemingly calm result, there is actually a tumultuous "struggle".

Because after the Toyota fraud incident was exposed in June 2024, overseas investors holding about a quarter of Toyota's equity expressed opposition to Akio Toyoda's re-election as chairman.

Moreover, two proxy advisory firms, Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) and Glass Lewis, have previously recommended that Akio Toyoda should not be re-elected as chairman, citing a lack of independence in Toyota's board and questions about the board's strategic ownership and equity returns.

And ISS directly stated in a proxy report that the ultimate responsible person for Toyota's recent vehicle testing fraud incident is undoubtedly Akio Toyoda.

Although Akio Toyoda has been re-elected, the support rate of shareholders this year hit a record low. According to foreign media, the support rate of Akio Toyoda in shareholder voting this year was only 72%.

For reference, Akio Toyoda was re-elected as chairman with a super-high voting rate of 96% at the Toyota shareholders' meeting in 2022, but last year, after Akio Toyoda stepped down as president, his voting rate dropped to 85%, which was already significantly lower than the previous year.

Interestingly, Toyota Group announced at its shareholders' meeting of its subsidiary Toyota Automatic Loom on June 12 that Akio Toyoda would no longer attend the shareholders' meetings of its subsidiaries.

The reason given was that due to irregularities in certification issues in companies such as Daihatsu Motor, it was necessary to change his attitude. "The shareholders' meeting is a place for dialogue between the company and shareholders once a year. Coming out myself would change the meaning of the shareholders' meeting, which is not a good strategy." Akio Toyoda said that he