MOSCOW (MRC) -- Asahi Kasei Corp. announced that Toshio Asano, 63, will step down as president in the wake of a piling data falsification scandal involving the company’s construction materials subsidiary, Asahi Kasei Construction Materials Corp., said the Financial Times.
Asano will be replaced by executive officer Hideki Kobori, 61. Asano became president in April 2014. The president of the construction materials subsidiary has also been demoted and replaced by a current director. The company said a "new management configuration was deemed necessary to delineate management responsibility" for the scandal, which broke in October when a building they had worked on in Yokohama was found to be tilting, writes John MurrayBrown.
In a statement when the story first broke, the company said it had "become clear" Asahi Kasei Construction Materials Corp., a subsidiary of Asahi Kasei, had "performed faulty installation of a portion of foundation piles" and diverted and modified data in the corresponding installation report, for work subcontracted by Sumitomo Mitsui Construction, the prime contractor for the construction of a condominium in Yokohama.
In November Asahi Kasei published initial findings of its investigation into 3,052 building projects and found in 360 cases key data had been manipulated. Of the 142,539 concrete piles installed on those projects, data was falsified in 2,382 instances.
In a statement the company said "a new management configuration was deemed necessary to delineate management responsibility related to the precast concrete pile installation issue at Asahi Kasei Construction Materials, and to advance the recovery of trust in and the sustainable growth of the Asahi Kasei Group as a whole".
The fact-finding committee of Asahi Kasei said in November it would "thoroughly probe the circumstances and motives for manipulation of data…and formulate appropriate corrective measures".
The company said in November the financial effect for Asahi Kasei was "unclear at this time" but said an announcement would be made promptly "in the event that a material impact is confirmed".
As MRC informed earlier, Asahi Kasei, an affiliate company of a major Japanese chemical producer Asahi Kasei Corporation, is in plans to shut its No.2 styrene monomer (SM) plant permanently on February 15, 2016. Located in Mizushima, Japan, the No.2 SM plant has a production capacity of 320,000 mt/year.
Asahi Kasei Corporation is a global Japanese chemical company. Its main products are chemicals and materials science.
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