Nissan
Rescuing Nissan from Crisis Running a business successfully can be difficult if we do not know how to manage the entire company. When it is a small business, it is relatively easier to find the problems, and the earlier the problems were found, the easier to fix them. However, when it comes to a big company, it becomes harder to see problems because they usually take time to rise to the surface. Therefore, by the time we find out what is wrong, it can be too late to fix them. The company can lose a lot of money, and at the worst, it can go bankrupt. Nissan, which is the third largest car manufacturing company in Japan, was about going bankrupt in 1999. Nissan once sold one-third of all vehicles in Japan, and in 1975’s foreign automakers regarded Nissan as No.1 imported car in North America (Magee, 44). However, its debt has risen up to $22 billion in 1999. In fact, “Nissan’s domestic market share, which peaked at 34 percent in 1974, declined to below 19 percent in 1999. Nissan’s global market share declined from 6.6 percent in 1991 to 4.9 percent in 1999, eight-year period in which the company had just one profitable year (Magee, 44). How could such a successful company, which has been in car industry for over 73 years, become to be about bankrupt? And, how could Nissan revive? In 1999, Nissan seemed that they only had a few choices to survive, either get help from the Japanese government or get help from foreign automakers. In 1999 Nissan chose to join hands with a foreign company, Renault, which had first lost 1 billion in ten years in 1996, and was about to divested the majority ownership by the French government (Magee, 32). This didn’t seem to be a good candidate for Nissan for alliance. Although the alliance between Nissan and Renault seemed that Nissan was making useless effort, the alliance actually has been successful, because a man, now President and CEO of Nissan, has been playing a big role in Nissan revival restoring confidence
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