Nissan CEO Makoto Uchida will step down from his position on April 1, the company said in a release Tuesday.
He will be replaced by current Chief Planning Officer Ivan Espinosa. He will be Nissan’s fourth CEO in eight years.
The leadership shakeup comes less than a month after Nissan and Honda terminated merger talks.
The potential $60-billion deal — which would have created the world’s third-largest auto company by sales volume — fell apart amid accusations of “pride and denial” at Nissan, as well as its refusal to close factories, according to sources cited by Reuters. Honda’s move to make the carmaker its subsidiary and push for deeper staff cuts at Nissan further clouded the fate of the deal, according to the report.
Along with Uchida, other senior management personnel to step down on April 1 include Chief Brand and Customer Officer Asako Hoshino and Chief Strategy and Corporate Affairs Officer Hideaki Watanabe.
The management changes follow a dismal set of results for the Japanese automaker which saw it report a 78% year-on-year plunge in operating profit for the third quarter ending December 2024. It also reported a net loss of 14.1 billion yen ($95.7 million) — a significant reversal from the 29.1 billion yen profit over the same period the year before.
Nissan cut its forecasts for the full year to the end of March for both revenue and operating profit to 12.5 trillion yen and 120 billion yen, respectively, down from 12.7 trillion yen and 150 billion yen. A full-year net loss of 80 billion yen was expected, it added.