By Chris Nicholls

SYDNEY: Sharp Australia has announced it will have a new managing director in two weeks’ time, as outgoing head Yoshinori Amatsuji makes way for successor Koji Doumoto.

Amatsuji, who has led Sharp Australia for almost five years, will head back to Japan, but his future role was not specified. His name was not listed as one of the staff changes Sharp announced yesterday.

Doumoto, who previously headed up Sharp Roxy Singapore, will begin his tenure on April 15, but will be in Australia for two days from tomorrow for a briefing and handover session.

Sharp Australia deputy managing director Denis Kerr said the change was simply part of the normal April 1 Japanese staff merry-go-round.

“Normally around this time is when all of the posting happen all over the world. There’s certainly nothing abnormal about it – it was expected,” he said.

Kerr said he expected no major changes to management style as a result of the changeover, and any transition period would be very brief.

Sharp’s announcement yesterday also confirmed Sharp America’s chief executive, Nobuo Harada, would move to Sharp Manufacturing Holland, and detailed a move to strengthen its research and development team, merging its main Technology and Display Technology Research divisions, but splitting the new body into four new components – ‘Open Innovation Unification’, ‘Device Technology Unification’, ‘System Technology Unification’ and ‘Display Technology Unification’.

In its release, it said the move was designed to speed up development time of new technologies. It will also focus more on electronic devices, it said.