Nissan’s board of directors is reportedly pressured by a team of current and former executives behind the scenes to promote Ashwani Gupta, the company’s COO, to co-CEO alongside Makoto Uchida.
Gupta was instrumental in the creation of Nissan’s latest revival plan and apparently his allies now want him promoted in order to make sure the new strategy is implemented.
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The lobbying to promote Gupta has intensified since Nissan announced its recovery plan that includes plenty of cost-cutting and measures to strengthen its Alliance with Renault and Mitsubishi.
Citing four people with direct knowledge of the matter and ties to Nissan’s leadership team, Reuters reports that Gupta’s supporters are proposing that he either share the CEO role with Uchida or replacing his boss and Uchida becoming chairman.
Nissan responded to the report, saying that there are “no plans or consideration for any change in the management structure at Nissan and no change to the close collaborative working relationship between Mr. Uchida and Mr. Gupta in their current roles.”
One of the sources who’s identified as an unnamed Nissan executive told the news agency: “We’re clear enough in telling the board what our expectations are. But we don’t want to push the issue too hard. We want this to happen in a natural way.”
(L-R) COO Ashwani Gupta, CEO Makoto Uchida, CFO Stephen Ma during the announcement of Nissan’s recovery plan
Doubts are growing among Nissan’s non-executive and non-managerial employees about Uchida’s ability to lead Nissan back to form from its first annual loss in 11 years, according to the same sources. They cited Uchida’s performance during the presentation of Nissan’s recovery plan, saying that his comments displayed a lack of urgency at a critical moment for the company.
“The Nissan plan is a restructuring plan, no matter how you slice it,” said Tokyo-based SBI Securities analyst Koji Endo. “But Uchida fell short of clearly defining this as a restructuring plan. I think it would’ve served him better if Uchida had said honestly what this is, in order to instill the urgency of the plan and to stress people need to scramble.”
In addition, the sources say that Gupta is already taking much of the leadership of Nissan, with Uchida being less engaged. A mid-ranking global product distribution strategy manager said that Gupta has hosted all the recent meetings attended by him and his colleagues at the HQ in Yokohama to discuss their future recovery strategies in key markets like China and the US. “He’s doing all the heavy lifting in formulating the plan, and we are not getting any guidance from Uchida,” the manager said.
Gupta has also formed a close relationship with Renault’s chairman Jean-Dominique Senard as the two have worked closely to develop Nissan’s recovery plan.
