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Clock's ticking for Nissan boss Uchida to show he has a plan

Business Materials 17 February 2020 04:50 (UTC +04:00)
Nissan’s new CEO Makoto Uchida doesn’t have time to work his way into the job. He is effectively on probation and has a matter of months to show he can revive the ailing automaker, according to three people familiar with the thinking of some on the company’s board
Clock's ticking for Nissan boss Uchida to show he has a plan

Nissan’s new CEO Makoto Uchida doesn’t have time to work his way into the job. He is effectively on probation and has a matter of months to show he can revive the ailing automaker, according to three people familiar with the thinking of some on the company’s board, Trend reports citing Reuters.

The mission: the new boss must prove to the board he can accelerate cost-cutting and rebuild profits at the 86-year-old Japanese giant, and that he has the right strategy to repair its partnership with France’s Renault REN.PA, the sources told Reuters.

The pressure intensified on Thursday when Nissan, which has had a year of turmoil since the arrest and sacking of long-time leader Carlos Ghosn, posted its first quarterly net loss in nearly a decade and slashed its annual profit forecast.

One of the people familiar with the intentions of some on Nissan’s 10-member board said an assessment of Uchida’s efforts and a decision on his future would likely be made toward the middle of the year.

“Probation is more or less the right way to describe the situation Uchida is faced with, if not more serious,” the source said this week.

“In the worst-case scenario he could be shown the door.”

Uchida referred Reuters queries to Nissan about whether he had just months to demonstrate he could turn the carmaker around, whether board members were satisfied with his work, and his relationship with other senior executives.

The company rejected suggestions of Uchida’s uncertain circumstances as having “no factual basis”. “Effectively or otherwise, Uchida is absolutely not on probation,” a Yokohama-based spokesman added. “There does not exist such a concept or system within Nissan to put a CEO on probation. He is CEO.”

Some supporters also stressed that Uchida has only been in the top job for little more than two months, while Nissan’s business has been in decline since 2017. Executives and analysts have previously said the company’s current woes are not of Uchida’s making, but are the fallout from an aggressive and poorly executed global expansion under Ghosn and Uchida’s predecessor Hiroto Saikawa.

“Nissan is on the right path for recovery ... although it might be a gradual process,” Uchida, formerly Nissan’s China chief, said in a video message to employees in October, shortly after being named CEO.

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