SONY'S SUDDEN SAMURAI

摘要

It wasn't as far-fetched as, say, a geeky high school student morphing overnight into your web-spinning, friendly, neighborhood Spider-Man. But the Mar. 7 announcement that Sir Howard Stringer would take over management control of Sony Corp., a $68 billion consumer-electronics and entertainment colossus, came pretty close to defying belief in Japan. Sure, Sony is a much-diminished force. But was it so desperate it needed to turn to a non-techie gaijin, a former CBS television news producer who speaks no Japanese and who plans to run the show mostly from New York, not Tokyo? Outgoing Sony CEO and Chairman Nobuyuki Idei says he handpicked Stringer, 63, based on his undisputed success as head of Sony's U.S. music and film operations. It helped, no doubt, that he led a consortium to buy the fabled Metro-Goldwyn Mayer Inc. studio for $5 billion last fall, beating out Time Warner Inc. With Sony's operations so enmeshed in the U.S. and its brand so well known around the world, "there is no reason why management should be Japanese," Idei maintains.