Like the driver who stubbornly insists they know where they’re going but ends up lost, pride may have caught up with Nissan Motor.
Now, the Japanese automaker might be stranded in a place even AAA can’t reach it. News reports on Wednesday said Nissan Motor has withdrawn from the agreement to combine with Honda Motor in a $60 billion deal, just over a month after the two firms formally entered talks on what would have been a historic merger.
The sticking point appears to be Nissan’s demand that the merger be one of equals despite Honda having a market capitalization more than five times its size. Honda in turn had proposed first making Nissan into its unit, the reports said, ostensibly to quicken the pace of restructuring at the troubled firm — a proposal unlikely to have gone down well with executives at a company that traces its roots back to before World War I.
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