Welcome again to everybody. Make yourself at home. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is the weekly discussion thread.
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Honda-Nissan merger fell apart allegedly. Prob propaganda but apparently Nissan didn’t agree with the rhe terms about “reducing costs” aka shutting down factories.
https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/inside-collapse-nissan-hondas-60-billion-mega-deal-2025-02-12/
Might be a L for China here.
How is a failed merger of Japanese auto makers, in an attempt to compete against the Chinese auto makers, a loss for China?
I see it as a L for other carmakers and especially Chinese carmakers because Honda wanted to cannibalize Nissan productive capacity, aka shut down factories and sell off assets. Which wouldve lead to freeing up of market share for carmakers to conquer, Chinese ones being better positioned to do it.
Nissan is already scaling down a huge portion of their workforce but it seems to me that Honda wanted to push that even further.
Apart and you have two competing car manufacturers that are both having to scale down and are hurting more financially. Together you may essentially destroy one but you make the other stronger, at least for a time. “Divided we fall” and all that. I see the failure of the deal as a win for China. Because instead of one stronger company to compete with, there’s two weaker ones that also have to compete with each other.