Former Bosch Exec Becomes Takata President

Takata Corp. has promoted Stefan Stocker to become president and chief operating officer at the company's shareholder meeting on June 26.

Stocker replaces Shigehisa Takada, who will trade the duties of president for those of chairman and CEO on that date.

Stocker, who was president of Robert Bosch GmbH's Japan unit in 2002-2009, became a senior executive at Takata since February after about a year as an outside adviser. He will be the first non-Japanese president of the Tokyo-based company.

Takata was hit hard by a global recall last month of about 3.6 million vehicles equipped with defective airbags components made by the company. A 30 billion-yen ($295 million) charge for recall-related expenses contributed to the company's record 21.1 billion-yen ($208 million) net loss in the fiscal year ended March 31 compared with an 11.9 billion profit ($117 million) the previous year. Revenue climbed 9% to 415.5 billion yen ($4.1 billion).