Yeah, Masamichi Kogai now is going to be chairman of the board, a big profit collector but no longer be a decision maker. His biggest failure to me is the promise of improving brand's low customer-retention rate to 60% in the US.
IMHO I don't feel Akira Marumoto can do much better than Mr. Kogai based on his performance in the US as the head of Mazda North American Operations. Sales volumes on all models available in the US are down dramatically othe than CX-5. And that's mainly because the overall US sales on compact CUV is up significantly.
I still think he might be involved in the decision making process... behind the scenes