Nissan Motor Co., Ltd., Honda Motor Co., Ltd. and Mitsubishi Motors Corporation announced on February 13 that they had decided to terminate the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that originally planned three-party cooperation.
Honda and Nissan held separate press conferences on financial reports and merger negotiations on the afternoon of February 13. Honda President Toshihiro Mibe attended, while Nissan President Makoto Uchida attended to explain the process of withdrawing the merger.
The merger of the two parties originated in March 2024, when Nissan and Honda began to discuss cooperation in the field of electric vehicles, and Mitsubishi Motors decided to join in August of the same year. Subsequently, as Hon Hai showed interest in acquiring Nissan, Nissan and Honda announced the launch of merger negotiations on December 23 last year, and stated that Mitsubishi was also considering joining the merger framework. Nissan and Honda will merge by jointly investing in a holding company, with both parties acting as subsidiaries of the holding company.
On December 23, 2024 local time, Honda and Nissan Motor Company announced the official launch of business merger negotiations.
In the process of promoting the merger, Honda made it clear that the implementation of Nissan's reconstruction plan, which had sharply declined in performance, was a prerequisite for cooperation, and decided to determine whether to continue negotiations at the end of January 2025. However, the two companies decided to postpone the decision originally scheduled for the end of January to mid-February.
According to people familiar with the matter, Honda believed that Nissan's reconstruction progress was slower than expected, so it proposed to Nissan to form a subsidiary in early February. However, Nissan strongly opposed this, which led to the termination of the negotiations between the two parties. On February 6, President Uchida met with President Mibe at Honda's headquarters in Aoyama, Tokyo, and directly conveyed his intention to terminate the merger negotiations.
Currently, both Nissan and Honda are facing the dilemma of declining sales and performance. The failure of this merger plan has brought more uncertainty to the future transformation and development strategies of both parties.
