Toyota shareholder meeting turns into tearful lovefest

You can imagine that for most automakers in today's market, shareholder meetings are about as fun as finding out your CUV only got 4 stars from the NHTSA instead of 5. Toyota has often been the exception to the rule, and its recent shareholder meeting went down unlike any other today in Toyota City, Japan. Rather than the normal bitching and moaning from shareholders about what management didn't do or should've done, the Toyota board was regaled with praise from its shareholders. One woman was reportedly even moved to tears when she stood up and thanked Toyota executives for the "wonderful work you are doing" in front of her 2,500 investor buddies in attendance.

Automotive News contrasts Toyota's happy happy lovefest with recent shareholder meetings for Nissan, at which CEO Carlos Ghosn was asked to resign by one investor, and DaimlerChrysler, which lasted 12 hours long for CEO Dieter Zetsche and his executive board. The Toyota shareholder meeting lasted just 2.5 hours, and it sounds as if Toyota's management enjoyed every minute of it.

BTW - a small item of note occurred at the Toyota shareholder meeting: Jim Press, Toyota's main man in North America, became the first non-Japanese member of the company's board of directors.

[Source: Automotive News]