Japan's Honda and Nissan scrap merger talks
The Peninsula
Tokyo: Japanese auto giants Honda and Nissan confirmed on Thursday they had scrapped merger talks that would have created the world s third largest au...
Tokyo: Japanese auto giants Honda and Nissan confirmed on Thursday they had scrapped merger talks that would have created the world's third-largest automaker by unit sales.
The bid to join forces had been seen as an effort to catch up with US titan Tesla and Chinese firms in the electric vehicle market, as well as providing a lifeline to struggling Nissan.
The firms said in a joint statement that they "agreed to terminate the MOU (memorandum of understanding) signed on December 23 last year for consideration of a business integration between the two companies".
"That the both companies were not able to reach an agreement is very regrettable," Honda's CEO and president Toshihiro Mibe told reporters.
Mibe insisted in December that any merger would not be a bailout for Nissan, which announced last year thousands of job cuts after reporting a 93 percent plunge in first-half net profit.
