From the last couple of Automotive News trade magazine:

Susumu Hosoi, 57, will become president of Isuzu Motors Ltd. He currently is an executive vice president at Isuzu and will replace Yoshinori Ida. Ida, 63, who has been president since 2001, will become chairman. The changes will become official at the annual shareholders meeting at the end of June.

Hosoi will have to walk a tightrope between General Motors and Toyota Motor Corp.

Toyota bought a 5.6 percent stake in Isuzu last November. But Isuzu still has several business partnerships with GM, which once owned as much as 48 percent of the truck and diesel-engine maker. GM sold its last Isuzu holdings, 7.9 percent, in April 2006.

Hosoi says GM and Toyota are "very important partners" for Isuzu. "We will have to have more talks with GM," he says. Isuzu will have to "consider flexibly" how to handle diesel ventures with GM in North America and Europe.

Meanwhile, Isuzu and Toyota still are determining areas for cooperation beyond joint development of small diesel engines. Those ties are complicated by Toyota's longtime truck subsidiary, Hino Motors Ltd. "I can't say concretely" how Isuzu and Hino will work together, if at all, Hosoi says.

Hosoi has sales and operational experience in Japan and abroad. He was first vice president and then president of Isuzu Motors America Inc. from April 1997 to January 1999. Before that he was president of Isuzu Motors Asia Ltd. He also has run service, parts and used-vehicle operations in Japan.

Isuzu also announced a number of other personnel changes. Haruki Mizutani will hand over the presidency of D-Max Ltd., the Isuzu-GM diesel-engine venture in Moraine, Ohio, to Maho Mitsuya. Mitsuya is a manufacturing manager at D-Max.

Mizutani will return to Japan to become a corporate officer responsible for global manufacturing and powertrain technology, among other areas.