TOKYO — The sale of Nissan Motor’s 1.5% stake in German automaker Daimler signals a retreat from a partnership that was driven by the personal connections of former Nissan chief Carlos Ghosn and has borne little fruit since his 2018 arrest.
The shares will be sold to institutional investors by the end of June, according to the Japanese company’s announcement Tuesday. Nissan said it will earn about 1.15 billion euros ($1.38 billion) from the sale, at a price of 69.85 euros per share, with the proceeds to be invested in areas including electrified vehicles. The move follows a similar step by Renault, a Nissan alliance partner.
Daimler told Nikkei it does not comment on transactions by third parties and that the partnership between the automakers is unchanged. The German company has not disclosed any plans for its shares in Nissan and Renault.
The business and capital tie-up that began in 2010 developed from the close personal relationship between Ghosn, who also led Renault, and Dieter Zetsche, who served as Daimler’s chairman and CEO until 2019. Nissan and Renault acquired a combined 3.1% interest in Daimler, which took a 3.1% stake in each of the two partners.
After the global financial shock of 2008 left automakers saddled with excess staff, equipment and debt, Ghosn saw joining hands with an industry peer as a way to overcome the crisis. The hope was that the partnership would reduce development and production costs, boosting profits and letting the companies compete with the likes of Toyota Motor, Volkswagen and BMW.
In a presentation with Zetsche at the 2015 Frankfurt International Motor Show, Ghosn touted the Renault-Nissan alliance’s 13 joint projects with Daimler. He called the tie-up “one of the most productive in the auto industry.”
“We cooperate when it is mutually beneficial,” Zetsche said. “And that is the way we will keep it.”
Yet the results of these projects leave something to be desired.
The automakers’ jointly operated plant in Mexico — one of their most prominent ventures — came online in 2017, producing compacts under the luxury Infiniti and Mercedes-Benz brands. But sluggish sales of small cars in the U.S. have left the plant operating well below its annual capacity of 230,000 vehicles. It produced 90,000 cars in 2019 and 106,000 last year, according to research firm MarkLines.
Nissan began using Daimler engines in its mainstay Skyline sedan in 2014, but has since switched to homegrown engines. A partnership with Ford Motor to develop fuel cell vehicles was put on hold in 2018.
Collaboration between Nissan and Daimler stalled further after Ghosn was arrested and Zetsche stepped down. With the partnership losing steam, the cross-shareholdings have come to serve little purpose.
