[Ambele]

It's hard to say how Toyota is governed unless you know more about how the Tokyo Stock Exchange functions. Toyota shares are only available here in the form of ADRs (American Depository Receipts). Each ADR share represents two shares of common stock on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

Toyota might not have chase short term profits like many American companies choose to do. After two hours of googling it (and reading english web pages only, not japanese webpages), the only notable thing I discovered was that Toyota pays out 30% of its profits in the form of dividends and spends 20% of its profits on share buybacks for a total shareholder return of roughly 50% of earnings each year. This indicates that Toyota is shareholder friendly but it's not clear if this is an obligation or a choice.

Instead of chasing short-term profits, I've observed that Toyota spends fair budget on advertising and showboating futuristic looking hype technology that is never intended to be released or used. Some investors primarily look at the daily news and are satisfied with this strategy. The technology Toyota intends on using isn't hyped up; it's kept a secret until it's actually released to drivers.

Finally 90% of Toyota Corporate Employees in the Plano, TX US Headquarters are contractors from other companies. Those ones sure as hell aren't getting any quarterly performance bonuses or any executive compensation. At best, the executives bonuses are getting to keep your air-conditioned job for another 3 years.