👉 Background: Nissan is the Japanese car manufacturer that was founded back in 1933. It's the maker of the X-Trail, Leaf, Pathfinder and the Qashqai. In 1999, Renault came in and saved Nissan from bankruptcy, taking a 43% stake in Nissan to form a special partnership (although this has decreased to 15% recently).

👉 What happened: Over the past few years, Nissan has copped a bit of a beating:

• In 2018, its former CEO was arrested for misusing company assets
• In the past 12 months, its global sales have declined by 3.8%
• It has suffered a 14% decline in the Chinese market because it just can’t compete on EVs

So, last month, Nissan announced plans to cut 9,000 jobs as well as cutting its global production capacity by 20%.

👉 What else: Nissan insides have warned that it's on the brink of collapse if it doesn’t find a new investor or partner to fund its loss-making. Renault reportedly wants out -  so Nissan is looking at a new collab with Honda and Mitsubishi to work on EV technologies together… and keep it afloat.

What's the key learning?

💡Partnerships in business can be a double-edged sword — while they can provide stability and growth, an over-reliance on a single partner can leave a company vulnerable.

💡Although Nissan has been burnt by Renault, it’s looking for a new and improved partnership. By pooling their expertise in EV technology with the  Honda and Mitsubishi, they could create new alliance to share resources to compete against EV competitors like Tesla or BYD.

💡This is a bit like the the breakup of PayPal and eBay back when they were the best of friends. By 2015, PayPal contributed roughly 40% of eBay’s revenue, and when Paypal was spun off into a separate business, PayPal thrived, but it left eBay pretty vulnerable. And still hasn’t really recovered.