Bloomberg claims: the Japanese company is concerned about the possibility of its future partner falling under foreign influence. Honda turned to Nissan with a demand to buy a stake from the Renault group. Currently, the French side owns a 35.7% stake in Nissan (including 15% of voting shares), which is valued at 557 billion yen ($3.56 billion).
Analysts doubt that Nissan is able to find funds for a share buyback, because as of December 31, 2024, the company’s market value fell to 1.56 trillion yen ($10 billion). Nissan is struggling financially and its net profit has fallen 94%, forcing the automaker to cut 20% of its production capacity and lay off 9,000 employees.
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Honda’s fears are understandable: a month ago, the Taiwanese company Foxconn expressed interest in a partial or complete takeover of Nissan. This is an electronics giant that produces Canon cameras, Xiaomi, Huawei and iPhone smartphones, MacBook laptops and equipment from Cisco, Dell and Hewlett-Packard. Japanese authorities do not want a large stake to remain with Renault or fall into the hands of potential competitors from Taiwan.
The Renault-Nissan alliance has existed since 1999. In 2016, Mitsubishi joined the partners. Plans to merge Honda and Nissan were announced in December 2024, but this is a memorandum of understanding: the terms and details of the deal are being discussed. The final decision could be made before the end of the month.
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