Nidec is facing another potential change at the top just as one of Japan’s most globalized manufacturers is trying to prove that its governance reforms can outlast any individual leader.
Reuters reported on September 28, citing the Nikkei business daily, that President and Chief Executive Officer Mitsuya Kishida was set to resign and could submit his resignation as early as September 29. The report did not state a reason or identify a successor.[1]
There is an important qualification. As of the morning of September 29 in Japan, Nidec’s own executive page still listed Kishida as Representative Director, President and CEO. Japan.co.jp therefore treats the resignation as a reported development, not a completed corporate action.[2]
That distinction matters, but so does the context. Nidec has spent years trying to move from a company identified with the extraordinary authority of founder Shigenobu Nagamori toward a system in which leadership succession, oversight and accountability are institutional rather than personal. A major accounting scandal, a Tokyo Stock Exchange special-alert designation and a broad management overhaul have made that transition more urgent. Kishida has been one of the central figures left in place to carry it through.[3]
Kishida remains CEO on Nidec’s official site
Kishida, born in 1960 in Kagawa Prefecture, graduated from Kyoto University’s Faculty of Education and joined Sony in 1983. His career included product planning, manufacturing and mobile communications. He became president of Sony Mobile Communications in 2018 and a senior executive at Sony in 2021 before joining Nidec in January 2022.[4]
At Nidec he rose unusually quickly: senior vice president, first senior vice president, executive vice president, and then President and CEO in April 2024. He became a representative director that June. The company said at the time that its nomination committee had reviewed the succession plan and selection standards before the board approved his appointment.[5]
Nidec itself identifies founder dependence as a governance risk
In its risk disclosures, Nidec is unusually explicit about the problem. The company says its success has depended significantly on the abilities and skills of founder Shigenobu Nagamori and warns that failure to produce a new leader capable of driving growth could adversely affect the business, results and financial position. Its stated countermeasures include identifying key management positions and developing a broader pool of leadership candidates.[6]
This is not merely boilerplate. Nidec has already gone through several succession experiments in a relatively short period.
The 2020 experiment with an outside automotive executive
In 2020, then-Nippon Densan appointed former Nissan executive Jun Seki as president. The company said the change was intended to strengthen management as it pursued an enormous long-term growth target. Seki had served as an executive vice president and deputy chief operating officer at Nissan, giving Nidec an external leader with experience running a major automotive organization.[7]
That experiment ended in September 2022. Nidec announced that Seki would resign as Representative Director, President and COO, stating that he was taking responsibility for deteriorating business performance. Hiroshi Kobe, who had participated in the company’s founding in 1973, became president the next day.[8]
The sequence exposed the difficulty of succession at a founder-led company. Nidec had brought in an outside executive, returned operational leadership to a founding member, and then in 2024 again selected an executive whose formative career had been spent elsewhere—Kishida at Sony.
Kishida’s mandate was to move beyond charismatic-founder management
After becoming president, Kishida described the company as entering a “second founding” period. In Nidec’s own sustainability material, he argued that the group needed to grow beyond dependence on the founder’s charisma and operate as a unified organization of roughly 100,000 people.[9]
In 2025, Nidec strengthened its chief-officer structure, creating clearer functional accountability across finance, legal, digital, quality and other areas. The company described the broader direction as a transition from management dependent on its founder’s powerful leadership toward a more systematized organization.[10]
Then an accounting crisis overtook the governance agenda.
The accounting scandal changed the stakes
Nidec established an independent third-party committee in September 2025 to investigate suspected inappropriate accounting practices across the group. On October 28, 2025, the Tokyo Stock Exchange designated Nidec shares as a “Security on Special Alert,” citing the need for substantial improvement in internal management systems.[11]
The third-party committee delivered an interim report in February 2026 and a final report on April 17. Nidec said misconduct and errors had been identified at multiple operations and revised its improvement plan around governance, internal controls and corporate culture.[12]
On March 3, the chairman, an executive vice president, the chief financial officer and other senior executives stepped down. Kishida remained President and CEO. Nidec said he would return 100% of his base compensation until the company submitted its confirmation of the internal management system, then planned for the end of October 2026.[13]
The board was also reshaped. As of June 18, 2026, Nidec listed 13 directors, 10 of them outside directors, with an outside director serving as board chair. That structure is materially different from the founder-centric image long associated with the company and is central to Nidec’s attempt to demonstrate independent oversight.[14]
From a Kyoto shed to a ¥2.6 trillion industrial group
Nidec’s succession problem is consequential because of what the company has become. Nagamori founded Nippon Densan in Kyoto in July 1973 with three colleagues, ¥20 million in capital and a small prefabricated facility. The business began with small precision motors.[15]
Today, Nidec makes motors and related systems ranging from tiny precision products to automotive, appliance, commercial and industrial applications, as well as machinery and electronic and optical components. The company reported consolidated sales of ¥2.607 trillion for the year ended March 2025 and 104,285 employees at that fiscal year-end. Its shares trade on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Prime Market under code 6594.[16]
That scale transforms succession from a founder’s personal decision into a governance question affecting more than 100,000 employees, global customers, suppliers, lenders and shareholders.
Three things matter next
The first is whether the resignation report becomes an official decision. Nidec’s own site still identifies Kishida as President and CEO at the time of publication. A formal disclosure would need to clarify the effective date, the reason, and the handling of representative authority.
The second is succession. Nidec’s September 1 executive roster shows a broad bench of leaders responsible for technology, automotive operations, AI and IT, legal affairs, digital strategy, quality and global businesses. But Japan.co.jp found no official announcement naming a successor to Kishida.[17]
The third is whether the reform program can continue through another leadership transition. The one-year anniversary of Nidec’s special-alert designation arrives at the end of October. Under the Tokyo Stock Exchange process, the quality of the company’s internal management system and its actual operation will be critical to the review.
If Kishida does leave, investors and business partners will be watching for more than a new name on the door. They will be looking for evidence that Nidec’s reforms no longer depend on any one chief executive—and that the company can make a leadership change without interrupting the work of rebuilding controls and trust.
Nidec became a global industrial company by mastering rotating machinery. Its present challenge is more abstract but just as fundamental: building a stable axis around which the management system itself can turn.
