Room at the Top? Some Nissan Bigwigs Want to Push COO Up the Ladder, Report Claims

Steph Willems
by Steph Willems
room at the top some nissan bigwigs want to push coo up the ladder report claims

Nissan’s under the gun, and some near the top of the company reportedly like what they see in the company’s chief operating officer, Ashwani Gupta. So much so, that they’re pushing for a change in roles.

They’d like to see the architect of the brand’s four-year turnaround plan, released last month, don the same hat as CEO Makoto Uchida.

According to sources who spoke with Reuters, high-placed backers of Gupta are applying pressure to Nissan’s board of directors to make the COO a co-CEO. A co-pilot of the strategy he created.

Under Nissan’s new near-term plan, Nissan will streamline its lineup and turn its focus to a few key markets, leaving alliance partner Renault to focus on remaining regions. Each automaker, as well as Mitsubishi, will lean on their respective strengths — both in terms of product and technology. Global Nissan production will decline compared to the heady sales volume seen in advance of the brand’s recent sales plunge.

From Reuters:

Thus far, Nissan Motor Co’s 12-member board has no plan to change the roles of Chief Executive Makoto Uchida or his No. 2 Gupta, the sources told Reuters. But the behind-the-scenes campaign, involving at least half a dozen current and former executives, points to continued tensions at the top of the Japanese automaker, which has had four CEOs in four years.

The sources, all of whom have ties to Nissan’s leadership team, declined to be identified because they aren’t authorised to speak to reporters and because of the sensitivity of the topic.

Apparently, some even want Gupta to replace Uchida, who only took on the role late last year. One Nissan executive told Reuters that, while Gupta’s backers have made their feelings clear to the company’s board, they don’t want to push the issue too hard.

In response to the outlet’s probing, Nissan stated it has “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.”

[Image: Nissan]

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  • Max So GM will be making TESLAS in the future. YEA They really shouldn’t be taking cues from Elon musk. Tesla is just about to be over.
  • Malcolm It's not that commenters attack Tesla, musk has brought it on the company. The delivery of the first semi was half loaded in 70 degree weather hauling potato chips for frito lay. No company underutilizes their loads like this. Musk shouted at the world "look at us". Freightliners e-cascads has been delivering loads for 6-8 months before Tesla delivered one semi. What commenters are asking "What's the actual usable range when in say Leadville when its blowing snow and -20F outside with a full trailer?
  • Funky D I despise Google for a whole host of reasons. So why on earth would I willing spend a large amount of $ on a car that will force Google spyware on me.The only connectivity to the world I will put up with is through my phone, which at least gives me the option of turning it off or disconnecting it from the car should I choose to.No CarPlay, no sale.
  • William I think it's important to understand the factors that made GM as big as it once was and would like to be today. Let's roll back to 1965, or even before that. GM was the biggest of the Big Three. It's main competition was Ford and Chrysler, as well as it's own 5 brands competing with themselves. The import competition was all but non existent. Volkswagen was the most popular imported cars at the time. So GM had its successful 5 brands, and very little competition compared to today's market. GM was big, huge in fact. It was diversified into many other lines of business, from trains to information data processing (EDS). Again GM was huge. But being huge didn't make it better. There are many examples of GM not building the best cars they could, it's no surprise that they were building cars to maximize their profits, not to be the best built cars on the road, the closest brand to achieve that status was Cadillac. Anyone who owned a Cadillac knew it could have been a much higher level of quality than it was. It had a higher level of engineering and design features compared to it's competition. But as my Godfather used to say "how good is good?" Being as good as your competitors, isn't being as good as you could be. So, today GM does not hold 50% of the automotive market as it once did, and because of a multitude of reasons it never will again. No matter how much it improves it's quality, market value and dealer network, based on competition alone it can't have a 50% market share again. It has only 3 of its original 5 brands, and there are too many strong competitors taking pieces of the market share. So that says it's playing in a different game, therfore there's a whole new normal to use as a baseline than before. GM has to continue downsizing to fit into today's market. It can still be big, but in a different game and scale. The new normal will never be the same scale it once was as compared to the now "worlds" automotive industry. Just like how the US railroad industry had to reinvent its self to meet the changing transportation industry, and IBM has had to reinvent its self to play in the ever changing Information Technology industry it finds it's self in. IBM was once the industry leader, now it has to scale it's self down to remain in the industry it created. GM is in the same place that the railroads, IBM and other big companies like AT&T and Standard Oil have found themselves in. It seems like being the industry leader is always followed by having to reinvent it's self to just remain viable. It's part of the business cycle. GM, it's time you accept your fate, not dead, but not huge either.
  • Tassos The Euro spec Taurus is the US spec Ford FUSION.Very few buyers care to see it here. FOrd has stopped making the Fusion long agoWake us when you have some interesting news to report.
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