Nissan Motor Co. President and Chief Executive Officer Hiroto Saikawa has stepped down over an excess pay scandal of his own — less than a year after he declared the automaker's departure from a regime led by former Chairman Carlos Ghosn, who was arrested and charged with underreporting his compensation and misappropriating the company's money.
Since the exit of Ghosn, a charismatic leader who led the automaker for two decades after turning it around from the brink of collapse, Nissan has been hurt by sharply plunging profits and faces a host of challenges, including reviewing its relations with its top shareholder, Renault SA of France. Saikawa's successor, who is to be chosen by the end of October, needs to take further steps to reform the company's governance and create a new management regime that can deal with the challenges and rebuild the automaker.
When he took over following Ghosn's arrest last November, there was criticism that Saikawa, who as a close aide to Ghosn played a key role as co-CEO since 2016 and CEO and president since 2017, would be the top executive taking charge of restructuring the company's management, especially since he had overlooked for years the suspected financial wrongdoing by the former chairman.