Leroy steps back as chief competitive officer at Toyota

TOKYO – Didier Leroy, the French chief competitive officer at Toyota, is stepping back from his role as the top non-Japanese executive at the automaker.

Under a management shuffle announced on Tuesday, Leroy will resign his post as executive vice president effective April 1 but continue to serve on Toyota’s board of directors.

Leroy will also remain chairman of the Toyota’s European operations. Leroy, 62, however, will hand off his duties as chief competitive office, a position he has held since 2016, as well as those as president of business planning and operations.

Leroy’s broad portfolio made him one of Toyota’s most influential executives, earning him a place among the so-called Seven Samurai, a group of President Akio Toyoda’s closest confidants.

An engineer by training, Leroy started his career at Renault and joined Toyota in 1998.

Shigeki Terashi, another of Toyoda’s Seven Samurai, will assume Leroy’s work as chief competitive officer in addition to his current role overseeing Toyota’s zero emissions car strategy.

The change was part of a wider management overhaul Toyota said was meant to keep the company nimble and responsive in an era of rapid change sweeping the auto industry.

Chief among the changes is the elimination of executive vice president positions and their consolidation into a broad lower tier of operating officer positions.

In a statement announcing the shift, Toyoda said the flattening of the management hierarchy aimed to give younger generations more visibility, opportunity and interaction with the top.