Nissan Plans Sale of Renault Shares Amid Financial Difficulty

Nissan plans to sell five percent of its share in Renault to raise funds for new vehicle development amid a turbulent financial situation.  

Nissan and Renault — who have been in a strategic alliance since 1999 — currently hold a mutual 15 per cent stake after the latter began selling down their 43.4 per cent voting share of the Japanese marque in 2023. 

Should Nissan sell five per cent of their shares, the company would raise the equivalent of approximately $1 Billion AUD for new vehicle development according to reports from Nikkei.

"We are bringing down our cross-shareholdings in order to invest in vehicles," Nissan CEO Ivan Espinosa told the publication. 

The cash injection is much needed by Nissan, recording a $7.1 Billion AUD loss at the end of the 2024 fiscal year ending in March. 

In late 2024, two Nissan senior officials told The Financial Times that the company had only “12 or 14 months to survive.” 

In May, 2025, Nissan announced their "RE:Nissan" plan, seeking to reduce over $5 Billion in costs by reducing part complexity, car development time and the number of car platforms as well as cutting 20,000 jobs and closing seven factories. 

In Australia, Nissan actually improved its sales by 15 per cent in 2024 over 2023, selling 45,284 vehicles, making it the country’s ninth best-selling make.

In contrast, Renault sold just 5,556 cars. 

This success has been in no small part due to particularly strong sales performances of models such as the X-Trail, Patrol, Nivara and Qashqai. 

The X-Trail was the cream of the crop of Nissan’s lineup, with 17,494 sold in 2024, making it Australia’s 16th best-selling car. 

However, Nissan’s sales are still short of their figures from around a decade ago, when they regularly sold north of 66,000 cars per year.