Major supermarket chain Seiyu Ltd. announced Tuesday following a board meeting that Vice President Masao Kiuchi had taken over the presidency the same day from Noriyuki Watanabe, who became the chairman.
Kiuchi said his mission is improve the chain's financial strength to better cope with market-value accounting and resume the firm's payment of dividends.
He has also been serving as the chairman of Ryohin Keikaku Co., which operates the casual clothing chain Muji, since August 1997. The company has not allocated dividends since fiscal 1998, which ended at the end of February 1999.
After Watanabe became the president 31/2 years ago, he carried out restructuring projects and formed a capital alliance with trading house Sumitomo Corp. in April 2000.
Seiyu's group interest-bearing debts were reduced from 1.2 trillion yen in 1997 to 600 billion yen at the end of February 2000, according to Watanabe.