Renault/Nissan/Mitsubishi Alliance Resets to Better Benefit Its Members; No FVE Changes

Renault, Nissan, and Mitsubishi held a joint conference on Feb. 6 that provided additional details about the framework agreement to rebalance the alliance following the announcement on Jan. 30 (see our note dated the same day). We liked how management characterized the new alliance framework, in which the relationships among the members would be based on equal input and proposed projects that each company could participate in to its respective benefit, compared with the prior alliance framework, in which compromise on projects led to less-than-optimal returns for each member. Under the previous arrangement, potential synergies were identified for the partners, which then had to execute. Under the new framework, partners identify where they want to execute strategy and invite other partners to join, with synergies a result of the collaboration.