Nissan CEO Says Search for His Replacement Should Be Accelerated

(Bloomberg) -- Nissan Motor Co. Chief Executive Officer Hiroto Saikawa said he should be held responsible for the turmoil at the Japanese automaker since Carlos Ghosn’s arrest, and he wanted the company to accelerate the search for his replacement.

Saikawa made his comments after shareholders voted Tuesday to create a new governance structure that includes three board committees: nomination, audit and compensation. Saikawa, whose position was reaffirmed, didn’t give a time frame for being replaced and didn’t name any potential successors.

“Under this new nomination committee, I personally want the committee to think about not only me, but also the next generation of leadership,” Saikawa said after a shareholder requested his resignation. “I want the committee to accelerate the preparation for it so that we can hand over to the new generation. I will be cooperative enough and make suggestions to make it happen.”

Saikawa has vacillated about the duration of his tenure since taking over for Ghosn, saying publicly in January he would step down shortly but then telling executives during a meeting that he plans to stay on at least three more years, according to people familiar with the matter.

“I should be responsible for the past, and this responsibility is not light at all,” said Saikawa, who also bowed in apology. “How do we proceed?”

Saikawa also said he would forfeit half of his pay for the current fiscal year. In a previous year, he earned 400 million yen ($3.7 million).

The 65-year-old executive was thrust into the spotlight in November after the arrest of Ghosn, the former chairman of the alliance between Nissan, Renault SA and Mitsubishi Motors Corp. Once a protege of the global auto executive, the CEO soon became his biggest critic.

Saikawa, a Nissan lifer, has a reputation as a fierce defender of Nissan’s interests within its dealings with Renault. The companies have been partners for almost 20 years, held together by a complex web of cross-shareholdings and joint manufacturing platforms, as well as Ghosn.

Saikawa started at Nissan after graduating from the University of Tokyo in 1977. Much of Saikawa’s career was spent in the purchasing department, a critical function in any company but especially so for an automaker, since procurement can account for as much as two-thirds of the cost of sales.

He has owned a Nissan Skyline crossover, speaks fluent English and lives in central Tokyo. He’s married, but like most Japanese executives is discreet about his private life.

Saikawa’s time at Nissan has included some complex ups and downs for the company. When the Nissan-Renault alliance was set up in 1999, Nissan was on the verge of bankruptcy, and Renault became its financial savior.

Those circumstances made Renault the alliance’s senior partner in governance terms, with a 43% voting stake in Nissan. In turn, Nissan owns just 15% of its French counterpart, without voting rights. Saikawa repeatedly sought to redress that imbalance, which has looked increasingly out of whack as Nissan’s financial performance outpaces Renault’s.

Ghosn viewed Saikawa as a vital ally, and in 2017 promoted him to CEO, stepping back from Nissan’s day-to-day management in order to focus on leading Renault and the broader alliance. At the time, he called Saikawa “someone I’ve been grooming for many years.”

More recently, however, the two men appeared to grow apart. Saikawa emerged as an opponent of Ghosn’s merger ambitions, publicly playing down the chances of their realization. Those statements prompted a dressing-down from Ghosn, according to a person familiar with the matter, who told his colleague he was jeopardizing Nissan’s credibility.

Under Saikawa, Nissan reported its lowest profit in a decade, lost a quarter of its market value and strained its ties with Renault by failing to support a proposed merger between the French company and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV. He pledged Tuesday to revive the carmaker’s business within three years.

--With assistance from Reed Stevenson.

To contact the reporters on this story: Ma Jie in Tokyo at jma124@bloomberg.net;Kae Inoue in Tokyo at kinoue@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Young-Sam Cho at ycho2@bloomberg.net, Michael Tighe, Ville Heiskanen

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