Nissan Motor Co shareholders yesterday approved an overhaul intended to strengthen governance at the crisis-hit Japanese automaker, which is still reeling from the Carlos Ghosn scandal and tensions with French partner Renault SA.
Shareholders voted in favor of a series of reforms, including the establishment of three new oversight committees responsible for the appointment of senior officials, pay issues and auditing.
They also approved the election of 11 directors as the firm restructures, among them two Renault executives, as well as Nissan chief executive Hiroto Saikawa.
The reforms are designed to put Nissan on a more stable footing after the shock caused by former boss Ghosn’s arrest on multiple financial misconduct charges.
Adding to the company’s operational woes, net profit fell to a near-decade low in the last business year and it has already warned of “a difficult business environment” for the next 12 months, but the reform plan nearly fell apart after Renault, which owns 43 percent of Nissan, complained that it did not have enough of a say in the new structure.
The crisis was averted when Nissan suggested Renault chairman Jean-Dominique Senard sit on the appointments committee and Renault chief executive Thierry Bollore on the audit committee.
However, Renault is not represented on the new committee on pay — possibly reflecting longstanding rancor in Japan over Ghosn’s high compensation compared with most other Japanese chief executives.
Saikawa has himself come under pressure, both for the disastrous financial performance of the firm and because the Ghosn protege is seen as a legacy of that era.
He opened yesterday’s meeting at Nissan’s headquarters in Yokohama outside Tokyo by offering his “sincere regrets” over the tumult that has engulfed the firm.
Saikawa assured shareholders that he would protect the independence of Nissan, which is part of a three-way alliance with Renault and Japan’s Mitsubishi Motors Co.
He said that “autonomy” would remain important for Nissan, while vowing to work with Senard to keep the alliance going in “the most sustainable way.”
“The structure of the tie-up could need to be reconsidered if imbalance becomes a factor of instability,” he said.
The three-way alliance is the world’s biggest-selling auto group, but it has been seriously strained by November last year’s shock arrest of Ghosn, long considered one of the most astute and powerful executives in the industry.
Ghosn, who has been sacked from all his roles at the auto firms, is awaiting trial in Japan on charges of underreporting millions of US dollars in salary and of using company funds for personal expenses.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts