Nissan Motor Co shares jumped after the Financial Times reported that a high-level Japanese group has drawn up plans to seek investment from Elon Musk’s Tesla Inc to aid the struggling automaker.
The group believes the electric vehicle (EV) maker is interested in acquiring Nissan’s plants in the US, the newspaper reported, citing people it did not identify.
The proposal envisions a consortium of investors, with Tesla as the largest backer, but also includes the possibility of a minority investment by Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) to prevent a full takeover by the Apple supplier, the report said.
Photo: AFP
The group is being led by former Tesla board member Hiro Mizuno and supported by former Japanese prime minister Yoshihide Suga, the Financial Times reported.
Shares jumped more than 12 percent on the news of the potential investment.
A Nissan spokesperson declined to comment on the report. Tesla did not immediately respond to an e-mailed request for comment. Mizuno and a representative for Hon Hai did not immediately respond.
Nissan finds itself in need of a lifeline once again after a deal with Honda Motor Co to combine the two brands under a single holding company formally ended earlier this month. The fallout of the scrapped deal has been especially pointed for Nissan, which has seen weak sales, overcapacity, an outdated lineup of unpopular models and revolving-door leadership since the 2018 ouster of former Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn.
That is putting pressure on the automaker to find support, and Nissan CEO Makoto Uchida has said it would be difficult to survive without leaning on a partnership.
Still, a deal with Tesla would be unexpected in part, because of the EV maker’s own struggles amid a market slowdown. Last month, it reported a drop in annual sales for the first time in more than a decade, and it has cut more than 10 percent of its workforce, including sales staff.
“For Tesla, it’s difficult to think there are any merits in buying Nissan,” Rakuten Investment Management Inc investment head Yasuhiko Hirakawa said. “It obviously has no need for legacy assets like engines and assembly lines. It’s difficult to imagine something Tesla needs that Nissan can offer.”
Despite Nissan’s challenges, its vast manufacturing operations and brand recognition are still enticing suitors.
Hon Hai has expressed renewed interest in Nissan after the deal with Honda collapsed, and Bloomberg News reported earlier this month that KKR & Co is weighing an investment in Nissan.
However, the carmaker continues to face risks from its restructure and the challenging geopolitical landscape. Moody’s Ratings on Friday cut its credit rating to speculative-grade and maintained a negative rating outlook.
“Whoever the buyer is, Nissan’s restructuring is unavoidable,” MCP Asset Management Japan strategist Rieko Otsuka said.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) last week recorded an increase in the number of shareholders to the highest in almost eight months, despite its share price falling 3.38 percent from the previous week, Taiwan Stock Exchange data released on Saturday showed. As of Friday, TSMC had 1.88 million shareholders, the most since the week of April 25 and an increase of 31,870 from the previous week, the data showed. The number of shareholders jumped despite a drop of NT$50 (US$1.59), or 3.38 percent, in TSMC’s share price from a week earlier to NT$1,430, as investors took profits from their earlier gains
In a high-security Shenzhen laboratory, Chinese scientists have built what Washington has spent years trying to prevent: a prototype of a machine capable of producing the cutting-edge semiconductor chips that power artificial intelligence (AI), smartphones and weapons central to Western military dominance, Reuters has learned. Completed early this year and undergoing testing, the prototype fills nearly an entire factory floor. It was built by a team of former engineers from Dutch semiconductor giant ASML who reverse-engineered the company’s extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) machines, according to two people with knowledge of the project. EUV machines sit at the heart of a technological Cold
AI TALENT: No financial details were released about the deal, in which top Groq executives, including its CEO, would join Nvidia to help advance the technology Nvidia Corp has agreed to a licensing deal with artificial intelligence (AI) start-up Groq, furthering its investments in companies connected to the AI boom and gaining the right to add a new type of technology to its products. The world’s largest publicly traded company has paid for the right to use Groq’s technology and is to integrate its chip design into future products. Some of the start-up’s executives are leaving to join Nvidia to help with that effort, the companies said. Groq would continue as an independent company with a new chief executive, it said on Wednesday in a post on its Web
CHINA RIVAL: The chips are positioned to compete with Nvidia’s Hopper and Blackwell products and would enable clusters connecting more than 100,000 chips Moore Threads Technology Co (摩爾線程) introduced a new generation of chips aimed at reducing artificial intelligence (AI) developers’ dependence on Nvidia Corp’s hardware, just weeks after pulling off one of the most successful Chinese initial public offerings (IPOs) in years. “These products will significantly enhance world-class computing speed and capabilities that all developers aspire to,” Moore Threads CEO Zhang Jianzhong (張建中), a former Nvidia executive, said on Saturday at a company event in Beijing. “We hope they can meet the needs of more developers in China so that you no longer need to wait for advanced foreign products.” Chinese chipmakers are in
RSS