Nissan promotes French executives after COO Gupta's exit

TOKYO — Nissan Motor Co. has promoted its regional managers including two Frenchmen to its executive committee following the departure of COO Ashwani Gupta.

With Gupta's departure, CEO Makoto Uchida is seeking to consolidate the automaker's leadership amid reports that the two executives clashed over the future of Nissan's alliance with Renault.

Joining the executive committee effective July 1 are:

• Guillaume Cartier, head of the Africa, Middle East, India, Europe and Oceania regions, started his career at Nissan in 1995. The Frenchman has held roles such as head of sales operations at Nissan Europe. Cartier also joined Mitsubishi Motors in 2017, soon after former Chairman Carlos Ghosn added the carmaker to the Nissan and Renault alliance.
• Jeremie Papin, chair of the Americas, started his career at Nissan as a financial adviser at joint venture Renault-Nissan in Amsterdam. The Franco-American has overseen corporate strategy and business development at Renault and served as vice chair of the management committee and CFO of Nissan North America.
• Shohei Yamazaki, who leads China, joined Nissan in 1992. Yamazaki has been vice president of Alliance Global, and senior general manager at Dongfeng Nissan Passenger Vehicle Co., a business unit of DFL, Nissan's joint venture with Dongfeng Motor Group.
• Ivan Espinosa, senior vice president for global product planning and global program management, will expand his scope to include global motorsports.

The changes will give the automaker a more agile leadership structure and further empower regional and functional leadership, Nissan said in a statement.

Under the new management structure, Nissan will not fill the COO position vacated by Gupta. Gupta stepped down this week after a three-and-a-half-year stint.

Nissan said responsibilities previously carried out by Gupta will be taken over by other executives.

Hideyuki Sakamoto, head of manufacturing and supply chain management, will be responsible for purchasing. CFO Stephen Ma will take over operations performance duties.

In a report this month, the Financial Times said that Gupta was ousted after clashing with Uchida, and for his stance in negotiations to rebalance the partnership between Nissan and Renault, the Japanese carmaker's biggest shareholder.

Gupta pushed back against the French carmaker's efforts to license hundreds of jointly developed patented technologies to other players and its efforts to secure a commitment from Nissan to invest in its electric vehicle subsidiary, according to the Financial Times.

Renault's management is optimistic that Gupta’s departure from Nissan is likely to speed up efforts to rebalance the decades-long alliance between the automakers and could lead to a final agreement by the end of the summer, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg.

Nissan is investigating accusations that Uchida carried out surveillance of Gupta, Reuters reported.

Bloomberg and Reuters contributed to this report