Dive Brief:
- Nissan will invest $663 million in Ampere, the Renault Group’s electric vehicle and software division, the companies said Wednesday.
- Renault Group and Nissan will also keep a 15% stake in each other, with Renault Group transferring 28.4% of its Nissan shares to a French trust. Each company will control 15% of the other automaker's shareholder voting rights, putting them on equal footing.
- The agreement, expected to be completed in Q4 this year, settles negotiations over contentious issues, such as sharing intellectual property.
Dive Insight:
Nissan and Renault Group agreed in January to reorganize their alliance, which dates back to 1999, with the French automaker promising to lower its ownership stake in Nissan from 43% to 15%. The agreement aims to give both automakers more independence.
Reuters reported in November that Nissan’s concerns over intellectual property initially held up the deal. Nissan wanted to safeguard IP related to its internal combustion engine and hybrid technology from Chinese automaker Geely. Renault and Geely formed a joint venture for powertrain technology earlier this month.
Nissan and Renault are scaling back their alliance because the two organizations don’t trust each other, former Nissan Chair and CEO Carlos Ghosn said last week. Ghosn said the alliance had benefited Nissan, Renault and Mitsubishi before his arrest in 2018.
“After my arrest, the alliance was shattered [because] trust was lost, and once trust is lost, there is nothing you can do,” Ghosn said. “With the latest agreement, they’re trying to go for a mini alliance with a very reduced scope of cooperation.”
In November 2018, the former CEO was arrested in Japan and charged with embezzling $140 million before being released on bail in March 2019. He fled the country in December 2019 while awaiting trial under house arrest and flew to Lebanon to escape what he called a “rigged justice system.”
Nissan elected not to replace former Chief Operating Officer Ashwani Gupta after his tumultuous exit last month. He reportedly disagreed with Nissan CEO Makoto Uchida over the automaker’s effort to reboot its partnership with Renault.
