Carlos Ghosn had been planning a merger between Renault and Nissan before his arrest in Tokyo this week, a deal that the Japanese carmaker’s board opposed and was looking for ways to block.
Several Nissan board members expected a bid to materialise in the coming months, according to one person close to the board. Another source said that a merger was likely to happen “within months”, and a third said it was under active consideration.
Renault and Nissan own shares in each other, in a structure designed almost 20 years ago. But Mr Ghosn, as head of the automakers’ alliance and chairman of Nissan, had been planning a merger to render the partnership “irreversible”.