2023-07-27 22:19:32
It took four months. Renault and Nissan announced last February that the agreement would be finalized on March 31, but it was finally on Wednesday that the two groups signed the definitive agreements reshaping their alliance. Nissan also announced an investment of up to 600 million euros in Ampere. The future subsidiary of Renault will bring together the electrical activities of the firm and thus bring together 10,000 employees in France. This new company is due to go public in early 2024.
At the time of the announcement of this new framework agreement last February, Nissan had committed to take up to 15% of Ampere, but without giving an amount. This turns out to be lower than initially expected. Bruno Le Maire welcomed “the implementation of this agreement” which “opens the way to new concrete industrial cooperation between companies, for the benefit of the alliance, Renault and French industry”.
Negotiations slowed down by several factors
As planned in February, the new agreement also includes a rebalancing in the long term of the cross-shareholdings between Renault and Nissan, to 15% each of the capital of the other. The French group currently owns 43.4% of the Japanese, while it only owns 15% of Renault. This imbalance has been a recurring source of tension in the past. Negotiations have also been slowed by tensions at Nissan’s summit in recent months, which culminated in the departure of several members of its board of directors at the end of June, including chief operating officer Ashwani Gupta.
The Renault-Nissan alliance planned for the next fifteen years brings the duo out of a long crisis which had reached its climax with the spectacular ousting of alliance boss Carlos Ghosn at the end of 2018. Arrested in Japan for alleged financial embezzlement , he had fled a year later to Lebanon. Nissan’s procrastination stemmed from a lack of “courage to change” within the Japanese group, Japanese automaker CEO Makoto Uchida said at a press conference on Wednesday. “It took us some time to draw a line under the past and focus on discussing our common future,” he acknowledged.
Nissan results up sharply
Nissan also released sharply higher quarterly results on Wednesday and raised its forecast for its 2023-2024 fiscal year, which began on April 1. The group now anticipates an annual net profit of 340 billion yen (2.2 billion euros at the current rate), which would amount to a jump of 53.2% over one year. He also raised his forecast for operating profit and turnover, which should climb 18.9% over one year.
The recovery of the group’s production and sales in Japan and North America has been “particularly notable” over the past quarter, and Nissan wants to “maintain this momentum” in the coming quarters, commented Makoto Uchida. China is the big downside to Nissan’s performance, which now anticipates a 23.4% drop in sales volume in 2023-2024 in this crucial market for it.
Nissan’s positive contribution to Renault’s quarterly net income will thus amount to around 271 million euros, the French group said in a separate press release.
#Nissan #invest #million #euros #Ampere #electric #entity #Renault