Nissan to axe 20,000 jobs worldwide

Nissan is preparing to axe nearly 20,000 jobs globally as it battles to turn around its ailing fortunes.

The Japanese car giant is planning to cut a further 11,000 roles on top of 9,000 already announced, it was reported on Monday.

The stark figures underline the scale of the crisis facing Nissan, which is nursing huge losses and facing intense competition in the previously lucrative Chinese market.

It is also still searching for a new industrial partner following the scaling back of an alliance with France’s Renault and a merger attempt with domestic rival Honda that was aborted in February.

Still, the prospect of yet more job cuts will unsettle tens of thousands of workers at the business, including some 6,000 working at Nissan’s plant in Sunderland, and signals that bosses are preparing for an even bigger shake-up than previously thought.

The fresh redundancies, which were reported by Japanese national broadcaster NHK, together with the previously announced job cuts, represent around 15pc of the company’s entire workforce.

A spokesman for Nissan’s UK business was not immediately able to confirm the claims. The Japanese parent company has refused to comment on the report so far.

The carmaker has been in crisis mode since November, when it revealed a 70pc fall in profits and warned jobs and production rates would have to be reduced.

Nissan’s woes have been blamed on a collapsing market share in China, where its sales have more than halved in the past four years.

The company and its Japanese rivals have been slow to develop their own electric models, leaving them flat-footed as Chinese manufacturers such as BYD, Chery and Geely produce hugely popular electric and hybrid-electric vehicles.

Stephen Ma, Nissan’s new boss in China, said last month that his company had been too slow adapting to the changed market.

“The Chinese brands were too fast, to be honest,” he told journalists. “They were exceptional in how fast they moved. It took everybody by surprise. Now I think we have reset.”

Felipe Munoz, an automotive analyst at Jato Dynamics, said Nissan was under assault in almost every major market it operated in, with Chinese competitors beginning to encroach on its sales in regions such as South East Asia as well.

Coupled with stagnant demand in Japan and Europe, as well as uncertainty around tariffs in the US, he warned that the company was running out of ways to grow sales.

Mr Munoz said: “Partly this is a result of external factors that are affecting other carmakers as well, but it’s partly due to their own product line-ups as well.