was a Japanese business executive.

Early life

Born on 29 December 1943 in

Mie Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kansai region of Honshu. Mie Prefecture has a population of 1,781,948 () and has a geographic area of . Mie Prefecture is bordered by Gifu Prefecture to the north, Shiga Prefecture and Kyoto Prefectur ...

, Nishida earned a bachelor's degree from

Waseda University , mottoeng = Independence of scholarship , established = 21 October 1882 , type = Private , endowment = , president = Aiji Tanaka , city = Shinjuku , state = Tokyo , country = Japan , students = 47,959 , undergrad = 39,382 , postgrad ...

and completed graduate work at the

University of Tokyo , abbreviated as or UTokyo, is a public research university located in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. Established in 1877, the university was the first Imperial University and is currently a Top Type university of the Top Global University Project b ...

. He married an Iranian woman shortly after concluding his studies in 1970.

Career

Nishida was still based in Iran when he was first hired by

Toshiba , commonly known as Toshiba and stylized as TOSHIBA, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. Its diversified products and services include power, industrial and social infrastructure systems, ...

in 1975. Nishida pushed Toshiba to invest in and develop laptop computers in the 1980s, and by 1984 was named a general manager, responsible for personal computer sales at Toshiba Europe. The next year, Nishida's efforts resulted in the release of the

Toshiba T1100 The Toshiba T1100 is a laptop manufactured by Toshiba in 1985, and has subsequently been described by Toshiba as "''the world's first mass-market laptop computer''". Its technical specifications were comparable to the original IBM PC desktop, using ...

. Nishida later returned to Japan and assumed increasing responsibility over Toshiba's laptop division. Nishida was named president of Toshiba America Information Systems in April 1992, and left the post in 1995, only to return in 1997. During the early 2000s, he continued to take on senior management roles. Nishida became president of the company in 2005. During his tenure, Toshiba acquired the

Westinghouse Electric Corporation The Westinghouse Electric Corporation was an American manufacturing company founded in 1886 by George Westinghouse. It was originally named "Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company" and was renamed "Westinghouse Electric Corporation" in ...

in 2006 for US$5.4 billion and ended the development of the

HD DVD HD DVD (short for High Definition Digital Versatile Disc) is an obsolete high-density optical disc format for storing data and playback of high-definition video. Supported principally by Toshiba, HD DVD was envisioned to be the successor to the ...

in 2008. Nishida was succeeded by Norio Sasaki as president of Toshiba in 2009. Nishida became company chairman, a role he held until 2013. In 2015, an investigation was launched into profit inflation that took place under company presidents Nishida, Sasaki and Hisao Tanaka. After the probe's findings were reported, Nishida left his position as adviser to the company. Subsequently, Toshiba sued Nishida, Sasaki, and Tanaka for US$28.2 million.

Death

Nishida died of a heart attack at Toshiba General Hospital in Tokyo on 8 December 2017, aged 73.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Nishida, Atsutoshi 1943 births 2017 deaths University of Tokyo alumni Waseda University alumni Toshiba people Japanese business executives 20th-century Japanese businesspeople 21st-century Japanese businesspeople People from Mie Prefecture