In addition to naming a new CEO, Nissan Motor Co. on Tuesday appointed several other executives to new roles as part of a management revamp.
The leadership shuffle follows a wave of management missteps, including falling profits and a failed merger with Honda Motor Co. last month that ignited a wave of actions, including reductions in global production and buyouts for its U.S. workers.
“My immediate focus is to work with the team, get them engaged and look forward into the future,” Nissan’s incoming CEO Ivan Espinosa said at a press conference Tuesday, after evading a question about reconsidering a merger with Honda.
Espinosa will be aided by a new executive committee, whose members will report directly to him, effective April 1 include:
- Guillaume Cartier, CPO and chairperson of the management committee for AMIEO. His responsibilities will be expanded to include global marketing and customer experience.
- CFO Jeremie Papin who also is taking on the expanded role of executive officer.
- Stephen Ma, chairperson of the management committee for China.
- Mitsuro Antoku, chief quality officer.
- Toru Ihara, chief HR officer.
- Eiichi Akashi, corporate VP of the vehicle planning and vehicle component engineering division. He will take over as CTO and executive officer, replacing Kunio Nakaguro in the role.
- Teiji Hirata, corporate VP of vehicle production engineering and development division, was named chief monozukuri officer and executive officer, overseeing manufacturing and supply chain management. Hirata will replace Hideyuki Sakamoto, who now serves the role and is a board director.
The incoming CEO also will also have two additional direct reports. Manabu Sakane, corporate VP of purchasing, who was named chief of strategy acceleration, and Tatsuzo Tomita, corporate VP of product development No. 2, was appointed chief of total delivered cost transformation. Tomita also is taking over the company’s research and development duties from Akashi, the company said.
The automaker also announced that Shohei Yamazaki, chairperson of the management committee for Japan-ASEAN, will now have oversight of Nissan’s affiliate companies.
As for Sakamoto and current President and CEO Makoto Uchida, the executives only retain their director positions until the company’s general meeting in June, Brian Brockman, a spokesman for Nissan said in an email to Automotive Dive.
Speaking to what the future of Nissan could look like, Espinosa, the automaker’s chief planning officer who has been with Nissan for more than two decades, pointed to its recently launched N7 EV sedan in China developed in partnership with Dongfeng. He said that the vehicle was getting good response and “are [in] the early steps of what we are going to drive into the future.”
But returning to profitability and improving operations, following months of declining sales and weak financial performance is a priority for Espinosa.
“Regarding capacity, well we’re going to be looking at the whole system,” he said. “A 360 degree turnaround is what we’ve been working on and we will continue evaluating and executing accordingly.”
