Ghosn to cede chief’s role at Nissan to focus on three-way alliance
Saikawa named successor as Ghosn seeks to boost ties with Renault and Mitsubishi
Carlos Ghosn is to relinquish the chief executive role that he has held for 16 years at Nissan as he turns to focus on strengthening an expanded alliance involving France’s Renault and scandal-bruised Mitsubishi Motors.
Hiroto Saikawa, who was appointed as co-CEO in November, will take over as chief executive in April while Mr Ghosn will remain chairman of Nissan’s board of directors, chief executive of Renault, and chairman of Mitsubishi.
The reshuffling of the roles leaves few people in doubt that the 62-year-old will remain in full command as he aspires to catapult the three-way alliance to the top league of global car giants alongside Volkswagen and Toyota.
“You can see pressures for consolidation everywhere,” Mr Ghosn told the Financial Times. “We really want to make sure that this alliance . . . continues to extend the scale and the synergies possible, not only between the three companies but eventually with other companies.”
The expansion of the Franco-Japanese alliance, which is nearly two decades old, comes as the car industry faces new technological and cost challenges in autonomous driving and electric vehicles. Toyota is expanding its ties with Suzuki Motor and Mazda, while PSA, the maker of Peugeot and Citroën cars, is in talks to buy the European operations of General Motors.
Mr Ghosn is also grappling with fraught relations between Renault and the French government, which commands about 20 per cent of voting rights in the company. The state voted last April against Mr Ghosn’s pay package at Renault, which wields effective control over Nissan through a 43 per cent stake.
Mr Ghosn, born in Brazil to Lebanese parents and educated in France, stressed on Thursday that he would remain the chief executive of Renault as he completes its transformation.
The change at Nissan had been expected as Mr Ghosn has said in October that he wanted to focus on turning round Mitsubishi, which suffered a plunge in domestic sales after admitting to cheating on its vehicles’ fuel economy data last year. Following the scandal, Nissan purchased a 34 per cent stake in Mitsubishi.
Analysts say closer ties between Nissan and Mitsubishi, makers of the Leaf and i-MiEV electric vehicles respectively, will give them the scale to cut costs to compete against rival Tesla, while helping Nissan address its weakness in Southeast Asia where Mitsubishi has a robust network.
Takaki Nakanishi, a former Merrill Lynch analyst who now runs his own research group, says the enlarged alliance, with global annual sales of nearly 10m vehicles, is unlikely to threaten the two-way competition between Volkswagen and Toyota unless they can find strengths beyond scale.
“Mr Ghosn built scale with the Renault-Nissan alliance but the next step is to foster a robust automotive group that can reign over the global industry on a sustainable basis. That will still take time,” Mr Nakanishi said.
Mr Saikawa, a 40-year veteran at Nissan, has long been viewed as the frontrunner to succeed Mr Ghosn. The two men met in 1999, the year Mr Ghosn joined Nissan to implement a drastic restructuring plan that saw the Japanese carmaker rebound from near collapse.
As Nissan’s representative on the Renault board until last year, Mr Saikawa, 63, built his name as a tough negotiator with the French government in 2015 after Paris moved to increase the voting rights it holds in the Japanese carmaker.
The incident exposed the limits of the alliance’s cross-shareholding system with the French group now the smaller partner in terms of annual production, market capitalisation and operating margin. Nissan has no voting rights at Renault, despite outgrowing its French parent and holding a 15 per cent stake in the company,
Mr Ghosn reiterated that the two companies “do not relate to each other through shareholding.” But analysts say Mr Saikawa, whom Mr Ghosn has described as “very loyal to the company”, is a safe choice in a period of tension, since he is unlikely to challenge Mr Ghosn’s authority and is expected to run day-to-day operations without a major shift in policy.
“I’ve always said my wish is to one day pass the baton to a Japanese CEO so it’s done. It’s a change of person but it is a change in continuity,” Mr Ghosn said.