Olympus Corp. has named Michael Woodford, the head of its European operations, as its next President, effective April 1. Woodford, joined the sales staff at KeyMed, now an Olympus subsidiary, in 1981, and he rose to the present post in 2008.
He has earned the trust of the Olympus management by improving the performance of the group’s European operations. He managed to secure a net profit of 200 million dollars for Olympus’ European operations.
He is expected to add on to the foundation laid by Tsuyoshi Kikukawa, the current president, who has made a series of strategic changes to enable the company to achieve the ambitious target of increasing its medical equipment sales three fold to 1 trillion yen (US$12.19 billion) by 2019, when Olympus will celebrate its centennial.
Choosing an Englishman to lead the company will send “a message that we are taking an important step toward real globalization,” Kikukawa told a news conference.
