NEW YORK (Kyodo) Forbes magazine has picked Kunio Nakamura, president of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., as its businessman of the year in Asia for spearheading the company's recovery by upstaging rival Sony Corp.

In its latest edition, Forbes described Matsushita's success over Sony in the flat-screen TV market as "a true-life version of 'The Tortoise and the Hare.' "

The business magazine said Matsushita grabbed a 24 percent share of the fast-growing and high-margin plasma-display market in 2002, while Sony, which has long dominated the market for conventional cathode ray tube TVs, was left with a third of Matsushita's portion.