Who is the President of Toto Ltd., Japans biggest toilets maker?”
Toto Ltd., Japan’s biggest toilet maker, may start production in India to meet rising demand from developers of luxury hotels and condominiums. The company will decide in the next year whether to set up a plant, establish a venture or invest in an existing company in India, President Kunio Harimoto, 59, said in a May 7 interview. Alternatively, the company may add a plant elsewhere in Southeast Asia, where it operates factories in Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam, to supply the Indian market. The maker of the Washlet, which combines an electronically controlled bidet with a toilet, aims to increase its proportion of overseas sales to 25 percent by fiscal 2017 from 13 percent last year. The company plans 300 billion yen ($3.26 billion) in capital spending by then. As much as 130 billion yen will be spent overseas, including India and China. Toto forecasts sales to rise 1.9 percent to 430 billion yen in the year ending March 2011.
Japanese stocks gained for the first time in three days after the European Union agreed to an increased bailout package of near $1 trillion to help Greece, Portugal and Spain to sort out their debt problems. Greece’s deepening fiscal crisis is not hurting Japanese economy, said Bank of Japan Deputy Governor Hirohide Yamaguchi at a press conference after holding an unscheduled meeting to resume a US currency swap deal that expired in February. The policy board also voted unanimously to keep the interest rate unchanged at the present 0.1% in Tokyo today. Sony Corp. reviewed its operating profit upwards on reductions in operating and manufacturing costs, including improved segment performance. JFE Holdings Inc, Japan’s second largest steelmaker, plans to spend as much as 200 billion yen to invest in coal and iron ore mines in Australia and Brazil to double self sufficiency as taw material costs jump, said the President of the Tokyo-based company Eiji Hayashida in an interview. JX Holdings
