Toyota chairman warns he may lose board spot if investor support continues to fall

TOKYO (Reuters) - Toyota Motor Chairman Akio Toyoda said he may not be reelected as a director if shareholder support for him continues to fall at the pace it did this year, according to an interview published on Monday.

Shareholder backing for Toyoda slid to 72% at the company's annual general meeting last month, following proxy advisers' recommendations to vote against his reelection. That compares to the support of 85% in 2023.

Last month's result marked the lowest support rating ever for a director in Toyota's history, the 68-year-old grandson of the company's founder said in an interview by the automaker's own news outlet.

"If it continues at this pace, I can't be a director next year," Toyoda said.

His support rating among foreign institutional investors was particularly weak at 34%. Ahead of the meeting, proxy advisers Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) and Glass Lewis both took issue with the way Toyota has dealt with certification testing violations.

Toyoda's support among domestic institutional investors stood at around 55%, compared to 70% or more in the previous year.

That indicated half of them were asking him to step down because of his behaviour over the past year, Toyoda said during the interview.

The weaker support among institutional investors contrasted sharply with a nearly 99% approval rating among retail investors.

(Reporting by Daniel Leussink and Kiyoshi Takenaka, editing by Deepa Babington)