(BFM Stock Exchange) – The Japanese manufacturer and Renault ally announced the departure of its managing director, Makoto Uchida, replaced by Ivan Espinosa. This change could revive merger discussions with Honda. And potentially reopen an exit door for Renault in terms of its participation in Nissan.

Nissan’s story will now be written without Makoto Uchida. The director general of the Japanese group had been one of the key players in the warming of relations between the Japanese manufacturer and its French ally Renault, after the Ghosn affair.

But since his appointment, Makoto Uchida has not managed to put the Yokohama group to post. In the third quarter of the year 2024-2025, Nissan’s operating margin fell to 0.7% against 5.2% a year earlier. In November, the company announced that it wanted to remove 9,000 positions around the world.

The Nissan title remains down 32% compared to its October 2019 level, during the appointment of Makoto Uchida at the head of Nissan. Over the same period, Renault also displays a drop but much less pronounced (-5%).

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Without too much suspense – the information had been turned up by several media – Nissan announced at the end of a board of directors that Makoto Uchida was going to leave the company on April 1. The Japanese leader will be replaced by Ivan Espinosa, current director of company planning.

In the wake of this announcement, the Renault action climbed, taking up to 2.2% before this increase is cut. The title fell by 0.1% around 3.30 p.m. but resists the decreased decrease in CAC 40 (-1.2%).

“The departure of Uchida was a condition set by Honda to relaunch the discussions of a merger. He left. So the door to new negotiations is ajar. This would also reopen an exit door for Renault in terms of his participation in Nissan”, deciphers an analyst.

Renault has, since the end of 2023, started to reduce its participation in Nissan, which increased from around 43.4% to 35.71% currently, counting the 18.7% housed in a trust and intended to be sold. This allowed the group to generate 1.62 billion euros in cash flow, cumulative.

The markets and analysts appreciated the group’s decision to shed these titles to reallocate these funds to other priorities.

But two problems arose. First the Nissan action dropped to an extremely low level. Then and above all, each time Renault has sold actions, it is in Nissan directly that the French group sold them. However, in view of the very tense financial situation of the Yokohama group, new share buybacks on the part of Nissan had become unlikely.

Another long path

A boon occurred last December: Honda and Nissan took the language to potentially merge. This announcement had also taken off the Renault action.

The rapprochement between the two companies would have offered options to the diamond group to further monetize their participation in Nissan. Honda could have directly redeemed the shares of Renault in Nissan. Another possibility: a “swap”, that is to say an exchange of actions, could also have been envisaged. The new ensemble could have given to Renault the 15% that Nissan holds in the capital of the French group in exchange for all or part of the balance of the participation of the Boulogne-Billancourt group in the Japanese company.

But this merger project failed and the two Japanese groups ended their exchanges last January. However, in February, the Financial Times reported, citing people close to the file, that Honda was willing to relaunch the discussions. But provided that Makoto Uchida leaves the management of the company. Which is now done.

The fact remains that the path to a hypothetical resumption of negotiations seems still long. Honda will likely have to present a more attractive merger project for Nissan shareholders and which will not wander its Japanese counterpart (which had a priori constituted the stumbling block in January).

Guest of BFM Business on Monday evening, Renault president, Jean-Dominique Senard, did not hide that the terms had no more. “The major subject is the social interest of the Renault group,” he said. However in the case of this operation “there was no control bonus”, which was therefore not “in conformity” to these interests, he added.