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Nissan and Renault are close to an agreement.

 

Renault and Nissan

Agreement is close to a critical first step that would require Renault to cut its stake in Nis­san, equalising the car­makers’ hold­ings in each other as well as their vot­ing rights, say people close to the talks. The break­through comes after months of stale­mate and fol­lows a show­down between Nis­san chief Makoto Uchida and its non-exec­ut­ive dir­ect­ors, who deman­ded he take a stricter approach to talks over the future of the 23-year-old alli­ance. Under the pro­spect­ive deal, equal­ising the stakes would be com­bined with Nis­san’s approval for Renault to carve out its leg­acy com­bus­tion engine busi­ness in part­ner­ship with China’s Geely and, poten­tially, with Saudi Ara­mco as investors, the people said. Renault is also set to spin off its elec­tric vehicle busi­ness, which Nis­san could invest in later down the line.


Luca de Meo and Jean-Domi­n­ique Senard, chief exec­ut­ive and chair of Renault, are set to visit Japan next week in the hope they can settle the last details before an alli­ance board meet­ing next Thursday and a formal announce­ment in Feb­ru­ary, the people added. However, some senior Nis­san exec­ut­ives still view that timetable as optim­istic, they said. Since its incep­tion in 1999, when Renault saved Nis­san from near bank­ruptcy, the alli­ance has delivered cost sav­ings and other syn­er­gies but also deman­ded con­stant nav­ig­a­tion of rival­ries and con­front­a­tion. Nis­san, mean­while, would recover the vot­ing rights attached to its stake in Renault.


Though Renault loses influ­ence on paper and will earn less from Nis­san dividend pay­outs, it has had little sway at the Japan­ese group in recent years, people close to the com­pany have said. Renault is hop­ing instead to rebuild good­will to push ahead with more joint oper­a­tional projects. The French state has a 15 per cent stake in Renault.

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