At the end of the year, the Alliance organization will move from a “globally standardized model”, Renault explains in a press release on Tuesday, to a “project-oriented cooperation”. In other words, Renault and Nissan will now work on a case-by-case basis, without a common entity or structure.
Very symbolically, the Alliance’s purchasing organization will disappear. It was the first structure created by Carlos Ghosn when he formed the Alliance in 2001, which employed 1,400 people. But today this common purchasing center no longer made sense, “decision-making had become too cumbersome,” they explain in those around Renault.
The consequences of the agreement signed in February
Another expert on the subject agrees: “when you buy together but you don’t do it for the same platform, and then you customize your car, it doesn’t make much sense.”
This new way of doing things between Renault and Nissan is the concrete application of the rebalancing of cross-shareholdings between the two companies, ratified last February. Each currently owns 15% of the other’s capital and “anti-competition laws force us,” explains Renault, “to separate all structures, purchases, technology, etc….”.
“We no longer live together with Nissan”
In the French manufacturer’s environment, we now accept it: “we are breaking up the Alliance.” A source close to the company summarizes: “We no longer live together with Nissan, but that doesn’t stop us from sometimes going on vacation.” These “vacations” are the few projects that the two companies still have in common, which plan to collaborate in Latin America or India, for example.
The Alliance will also maintain its operating council, the AOB, where the leaders of Nissan, Renault and Mitsubishi meet every month. The opportunity to decide on possible collaborations and maintain some semblance of a future together.
Source: BFM TV
