Nissan announced on Tuesday that CEO Makoto Uchida will step down at the end of this month.
Current Chief Planning Officer Ivan Espinosa will be assuming the role starting in April in a bid to turn around the struggling Yokohama-based automaker.
Speculation was running high in recent weeks that Uchida would be taking responsibility for the failure of a proposed merger with Honda as well as poor earnings.
Uchida, 58, became Nissan CEO in 2019 and has led efforts to get the automaker back on its feet, but the initiatives have so far failed.
Ivan Espinosa
| Nissan / via JIJI
The company is expected to post an ¥80 billion ($536 million) loss for the fiscal year ending March. In the first half of this fiscal year, Nissan’s net profit fell about 90% mainly due to sluggish sales in North America and China while introducing a plan to cut 9,000 jobs.
Uchida recently sought a merger with Honda so that the two could combine forces in order to develop new products connected to automobiles, autonomous cars and electric vehicles.
However, the two automakers gave up on the merger, which would have created the world’s No. 3 vehicle manufacturing group, last month, just weeks after talks formally started.
