THE finance chief of a major car brand is reportedly set to step down just hours after it was reported that the firm was “on the brink of collapse”.
Insiders have claimed that the collapse of a major partnership has left the company scrabbling for financial backing just to make it through 2025.
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It was just this week that the Financial Times reported that Nissan was fighting for its very survival in a desperate search for new investment.
Pressure on the firm’s balance sheet was apparently worsened by the reported collapse of the three-way agreement between Nissan, Mitsubishi and Renault, which had been in place since 1999.
Sources claimed that the French manufacturer was looking to reduce its stake in its Japanese partner.
One company official said: “We have 12 or 14 months to survive.
“This is going to be tough.
“And in the end, we need Japan and the US to be generating cash.”
In the wake of that revelation, Bloomberg is now reporting that Nissan’s Chief Financial Officer, Stephen Ma, is expected to leave the role in the near future.
Ma has been in post since 2019 as part of a brutal management cull following the arrest of former CEO Carlos Ghosn, who later fled Japan amid allegations of false accounting.
Since then, the firm has cut 9,000 jobs worldwide and embarked on a savage cutback regime in an effort to save £2 billion.
It is unclear whether the report means that Ma is set to leave the company altogether or that he will be shuffled into a different role.
New CEO Makoto Uchida, who himself took a 50% pay decrease as part of the cuts, attributed Nissan’s struggles to its failure to sure up its hybrid lineup in contrast to rivals Honda and Toyota.
He said: “This has been a lesson learned and we have not been able to keep up with the times.
“We weren’t able to foresee that hybrid electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids would be so popular.”
However, Honda could be the centrepiece of Nissan’s recovery plan, with the company reportedly seeking increased cooperation with its larger rival.
The two companies could be set to ramp up their partnership, with greater financial backing potentially coming from Honda.
It could also buy a stake in Nissan itself, though those within the smaller company say this remains a “last resort” option.
An alliance between the two could be sufficiently large to face down Toyota as Japan’s largest carmaker.
SunMotors has contacted Nissan for comment.
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