Reports coming out of Japan suggest that Mitsubishi Motors won’t be part of the Honda-Nissan merger. Instead, it wants to remain independent while working closely with the two merging automakers.
A report from Japan’s Yomiuri newspaper (via Automotive News) cites sources that say Mitsubishi Motors would be listed separately on the stock market, while Honda and Nissan will be part of a new holding company structure.
Responding to the report, Mitsubishi says “it was still studying its options and that no conclusions have been reached.”
Mitsubishi CEO Takao Kato, who took the stage with his counterparts from Honda and Nissan at the December 23 merger announcement, said then that his company would decide by the end of January whether to participate in the grand integration. Nissan is Mitsubishi’s biggest shareholder.
Kato said that greater cooperation among the companies to improve efficiency and competitiveness is positive. But it was still too early to tell how impactful synergies could be.
Going it alone presents potentially huge challenges for Mitsubishi Motors in an era when global carmakers are joining forces to deliver big volume and share development costs. As one of Japan’s smaller players, Mitsubishi sells fewer than 1 million vehicles worldwide.
A top selling point of the proposed Honda-Nissan merger is huge economies of scale.
In announcing their historic agreement, Honda CEO Toshihiro Mibe and his Nissan counterpart Makoto Uchida said the goal is to become a “world-class mobility company” with revenue exceeding 30 trillion yen (USD 190.9 billion) and operating profit of more than 3 trillion yen (USD 19.1 billion).
Honda and Nissan aim to finalize an agreement by June and establish the holding company by August 2026. They plan to take the new entity public around that time, pending investor approval at special shareholder meetings in April 2026. Both Honda and Nissan would be delisted from the Tokyo Stock Exchange and become subsidiaries of the new holding company.
As part of Nissan’s ongoing internal restructuring and revival plans, Nissan is selling down its stake in Mitsubishi. In November, Mitsubishi bought back a chunk of Nissan’s holdings that amounted to about 10 percent of Mitsubishi’s outstanding shares. Trading company Mitsubishi Corporation is Mitsubishi Motor’s other big shareholder, owning 20 percent.
If Mitsubishi stays independent, the new Honda-Nissan holding company could still end up having a stake in Mitsubishi, albeit a diluted one from the size of Nissan’s existing holding.
Maybe since Mitsubishi used to supply technology to Hyundai in the past, just as Mazda did the same thing with Kia, then I think a partnership between Hyundai and Honda-Nissan would be like a nightmare since the former is South Korean and the latter is Japanese.
ReplyDeleteThat was a long time ago. And if you're saying that Hyundai's cooperation with mitsubishi is what affected them today, surely you would've think the bigger and much more latter impact chrysler and daimler group had on Mitsubishi during the 2000s. It's the reason why Mitsubishi FUSO is now owned by Daimler Group. They milked mitsubishi of their engineer ing prowess. the last time mitsubishi develop a global platform was the GS platform and it was left behind by it's competitors and now they're using nissans platform. Goes to show the decline of mitsubishi outside of SEA and Japan
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