Senior Nissan Executive Departs -- WSJ

By Sean McLain 

This article is being republished as part of our daily reproduction of WSJ.com articles that also appeared in the U.S. print edition of The Wall Street Journal (November 2, 2019).

TOKYO -- Nissan Motor Co. said a senior executive in charge of communications and government affairs was leaving, part of a management shake-up ahead of the arrival of a new chief executive on Dec. 1.

The departing executive, Hitoshi Kawaguchi, was a key player in the secret Nissan investigation that led to the arrest of former Chairman Carlos Ghosn and worked with Japanese government officials in resisting moves by Nissan's partner, Renault SA of France, for a closer alliance, according to internal emails from last year and people familiar with Mr. Kawaguchi's role.

Nissan declined to comment on Mr. Kawaguchi's departure and declined to make him available for comment.

Nissan directors blamed Mr. Kawaguchi, in his role leading communications, for not stopping leaks to the Japanese press in recent months, according to people familiar with the board's thinking. The board was angry that the outline of Nissan's April-June quarterly results announcement, in which the company reported a sharp drop in earnings and plans for thousands of layoffs around the world, appeared in the Nikkei newspaper before it was released to investors, one of the people said.

"We said that this is destroying the company," this person said. "We want to have much better control and communication, and the guy in charge of communication was Kawaguchi."

In October, Nissan named a new chief executive officer, Makoto Uchida, to replace Hiroto Saikawa, who was ousted in September. On Friday, Nissan's board met and agreed that Mr. Uchida as well as the car maker's new chief operating officer Ashwani Gupta would start their jobs Dec. 1, a month earlier than expected.

Some directors had pushed to move forward Mr. Uchida's start date, given Nissan's falling sales and profit. Mr. Uchida attended a meeting Wednesday where the heads of Nissan, Renault and the third alliance partner, Mitsubishi Motors Corp., met to hammer out strategy for the coming year.

Nissan's personnel overhaul also included a decision last month to take away the responsibilities of Hari Nada, who was previously in charge of legal affairs. Mr. Nada, who remains at Nissan, was one of the executives who secretly cooperated with Japanese prosecutors ahead of Mr. Ghosn's arrest last November. Mr. Ghosn, who faces charges of financial wrongdoing, has said he is innocent.

Initially, Mr. Kawaguchi, the government-relations and communications chief, had been slated to take over Mr. Nada's responsibilities. Now that Mr. Kawaguchi is leaving, those responsibilities will be handled by a group of other executives, a Nissan spokeswoman said.

Nissan said Hiroshi Karube, the chief financial officer, would retire and be replaced by Stephen Ma, who previously worked under Mr. Uchida, the new CEO, when both were at Nissan affiliate Dongfeng Motor Co. in China.

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(END) Dow Jones Newswires

November 02, 2019 02:47 ET (06:47 GMT)

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