The choice of the separation of property regime seems to have calmed things down at Renault and Nissan.
After weeks of palaver between the protagonists of the Renault Nissan Alliance, then Mitsubishi - this strange coupling intended to form one of the world's leading automobile groups -, a new, lighter and more pragmatic version of this three-way couple , is celebrated on Monday 6 February in London.
For the first time since the end of the Ghosn era, a major press and financial analyst conference brought together the leaders of the three automotive groups: Luca de Meo, the managing director of Renault, and Jean-Dominique Senard, the chairman of the board of directors of Losange, Makoto Ushida, the managing director of Nissan and Takao Kato, that of Mitsubishi.
Contrary to what was common until 2018, the year in which the former Renault and Nissan executive was arrested, no global sales objectives, no global turnover or no amount of synergies will be communicated for this alliance reviewed and corrected.
“Hundreds of millions of profits per year”
"
The billions of euros of synergies announced in the past, we can't do it
," sums up a good expert on the file.
This time, we are starting from the operational projects to discuss them at the level of the general management of the companies
”.
Figures are still mentioned.
They no longer have anything to do with the 10 billion annual synergies that Carlos Ghosn planned to reach in 2022-2023.
It is “
hundreds of millions of profits per year for each company, perhaps even a billion euros
”, risks an actor in this new partnership.
In the marriage of convenience concluded in 1999, the cross-shareholdings between Renault and Nissan favored the Diamond on paper.
The French owned 43.4% of the Japanese, but without any power after an agreement made in 2002. Nissan only had 15% of Renault but without power either.
In the new agreement, which is expected to take effect in the fourth quarter of 2023, the two manufacturers will be tied, both owning 15% of the other with voting rights for a minimum period of fifteen years.
The balance of Renault's stake (28.4%) in Nissan will be held in a trust.
Pooled investments for joint projects
Its vocation is no longer to form a giant whose number of consolidated units would follow Volkswagen or Toyota.
It will be used to give substance to joint projects by pooling investments or technologies in different regions of the world, but in a contractual and operational manner.
Forget the “ leader follower
” philosophy
presented in 2020 which gave everyone an area of the world and a technology in which they would be the referent for the others.
“
With Nissan, we will work together on five to ten projects.
Most are planned after 2025
,” says a Renault source.
This should be the case with an industrial platform, this technological base used in the automobile, that Renault will launch in India, where Nissan has a factory in Chennai.
It will be inspired by low-cost Dacia SUV models, which could meet the expectations of the local and export market.
This will also be the case in Latin America, where Renault has been present for a long time.
Nissan is already taking advantage of its partner's Argentine plant.
He manufactures his Frontier pick-up there, which also exists at Renault under the name of Alaskan.
In exchange for this collaboration, Renault will take advantage of the Nissan plant in Mexico – which originally belonged to it – to produce a new model there.
In Argentina and India, Nissan and Renault are expected to develop joint electric vehicles in the city car segment.
At the same time, the two allies should launch an electric utility vehicle in Europe, the connected Flex Van, already mentioned by Luca de Meo last November.
Take advantage of the strengths of each member
Beyond operational projects, Nissan and Mitsubishi will commit alongside Renault by investing both in Ampère, the entity that Renault will create in electrical and software.
They will also become customers of Horse, the Renault subsidiary dedicated to thermal and hybrids, and could also collaborate in solid batteries - a technology in which Nissan is at the forefront - and in autonomous driving aids.
The three companies no longer see the Alliance on a large scale.
Their leaders only want to take advantage of each other's strengths, and
“that each company take its destiny into its own hands”
, sums up one of them.
