Renault-Nissan pact only roadside repairs

Hong Kong

THE changes to Renault and Nissan's partnership look like running repairs. A new pact curbs France's growing power at Renault, and limits the French car-maker's sway over its Japanese affiliate. It ends months of distracting to-and-fro over the auto alliance, which sells one in 10 of the world's cars. But fiddly legal fixes only go so far. It would be better for boss Carlos Ghosn to drive the duo towards a full merger.

The alliance has long looked lopsided. Renault holds 43.4 per cent of Nissan after rescuing the Japanese firm in 1999. Meanwhile, Nissan owns just 15 per cent of Renault and cannot vote those shares. But Nissan has outgrown its saviour financially and operationally, and is now worth US$47 billion to Renault's US$29 billion. Things worsened in April when Paris lifted its stake in Renault to secure double voting rights from 2016, as a new French law allowed. That raised the prospect of France bending both Renault, and indirectly Nissan, more keenly to its will.