Nissan Motor has whittled down its shortlist of candidates to replace former CEO Hiroto Saikawa, who resigned last month after admitting to financial “misappropriation”, to three company insiders – according to local reports in Japan citing sources close to the company.
Jean-Dominique Senard, chairman of Renault SA – which owns 43.4% of Nissan – sits on the Nissan board’s nominating committee and is said to have interviewed the three candidates via a TV conference calls from his company’s Paris headquarters this week.
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Two front-runners for the job include the current acting CEO Yasuhiro Yamauchi, a long-serving Nissan veteran who stepped up to temporarily fill the void last month; and the former Nissan China CEO Jun Seki. The third name mentioned as a possible external candidate is Indian-born Ashwani Gupta, the former purchasing managing at Renault in India until he who was appointed chief operating officer at Mitsubishi Motors earlier this year.
Mr Senard hopes a final decision will be made ahead of a forthcoming Renault-Nissan alliance meeting and the release of Nissan’s second-quarter FY2020 financial results.
Renault is looking for a candidate to steer the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance back on course after a very negative twelve months of the company, following the ousting of former chairman Carlos Ghosn and as global sales and earnings continue to plunge. Nissan’s dividend cuts wiped some EUR130m from Renault’s earnings in the last financial year.
Resistance within the Nissan boardroom recently over a proposed full merge between Renault and Nissan threatened to undo the twenty-year alliance and is said to have contributed to failure of a proposed merger between Renault and Fiat Chrysler earlier this year. With a new CEO in charge, Renault is looking to restore stronger ties between the two companies and accelerate operational integration between the two companies to help turn Nissan’s financial performance., including more joint component purchasing, vehicle platform standardization and stronger new model programmes.
The new CEO will need to push through a significant cost-cutting programme globally, including plant closures, as global sales continue to weaken.
See also: COMMENT – CEO appointment will set Nissan’s direction
