Historic loss, declining sales... Nissan's descent into hell

"Why did Nissan, twenty-five years after its first recovery, repeat the same mistakes?" The question burst forth like a cry from the heart from a Japanese journalist at a press conference. Chairing his first annual results conference on Tuesday, Nissan's new CEO, Ivan Espinosa , had the difficult task of presenting a picture of a company on the brink of collapse and offering credible prospects for recovery. He also had to take on a quarter-century of Nissan history. A history that resembles a loop, with an absurd return to the starting point: waves of layoffs, plant closures... The deluge of poor past results and heartbreaking upcoming restructurings reeled off by Ivan Espinosa irresistibly evokes the manufacturer's situation in 1999, when it was taken over by Renault, followed by the implementation of the shock therapy administered by its emissary Carlos Ghosn . Before, here...