Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. plans to name Vice President Norio Wada as its next president, replacing Junichiro Miyazu, who is expected to become a senior adviser, sources said Tuesday.
The reshuffle will be formally decided by NTT's board of directors in late June after approval from the Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications.
Miyazu apparently intends to make way for Wada, now that he has completed his restructuring projects at the NTT group, the sources said.
They were referring to the group's two regional phone service operators, NTT East Corp. and NTT West Corp., which are scheduled to launch subsidiaries May 1 in restructuring moves that involve about 100,000 employees.
Miyazu also dealt with losses on overseas investments made by mobile phone service operator NTT DoCoMo Inc. and by the group's long-distance and international calling arm, NTT Communications Corp.
Meanwhile, the group has taken steps to prepare for greater use of the Internet in everyday life by entering the Internet Protocol phone field.
Miyazu placed priority on the Internet when he took the helm of NTT in 1996, before the telecom giant adopted the holding-company system.
A native of Yamaguchi Prefecture, Wada, 61, joined NTT in 1964 and has been vice president at the holding company since it was established in July 1999. He has experience in labor management and contributed to the group's restructuring.
Masanobu Suzuki, president of NTT Communications, and Keiji Tachikawa, president of NTT DoCoMo, have also been considered strong candidates for taking the group's helm, but losses from overseas investments appear to have negatively affected their chances to rise to the top.
