Nissan walks away from merger with Honda

TheStreet’s Conway Gittens brings you the biggest news of the day, including whyNissan rejected a deal to merge with Honda.

Transcript

00:00A deal to create the world's third biggest automaker is falling apart.

00:04Talks between Honda and Nissan have hit the skids a few weeks after they began.

00:09The deal has gone afoul after Honda, the bigger of the two, wanted to switch from a merger

00:14of eagles to Nissan becoming a subsidiary of Honda.

00:18The tense negotiations have spilled out into the Japanese media.

00:23If the deal indeed falls through, it could spell big trouble for Nissan.

00:29The two hotels have been in a slump for years after rigid Japanese culture forced its charismatic

00:34leader Carlos Ghosn to flee the country in the most bizarre way.

00:38He was smuggled out of Japan on a private jet inside a large freight box to avoid facing

00:45charges of financial mismanagement.

00:48Since then, Nissan's problems have only gotten worse.

00:51It hasn't kept up with changes brought on by the EV revolution, and the U.S. drivers

00:55prefer EV-gas hybrids, which Nissan and its troubled merger partner Honda lack in.

01:01Meanwhile, in China, the strength of homegrown brands is muscling out everyone else, including

01:08those two.

01:09Nissan, however, has an additional problem.

01:12Mexico is Nissan's top manufacturing hub in the world.

01:16With Trump threatening to slap tariffs on Mexican goods, Nissan's profitability is

01:21sure to take a hit.

01:23As it stands, Nissan is already on track to slash its global workforce by 9,000 and

01:29reduce its factory capacity by 20 percent.

01:34Turning now to markets, Walt Disney helped lead the Dow higher Wednesday.

01:38Quarterly sales and profits beat forecasts thanks to the box office strength of Moana,

01:42too.

01:43But on the downside, subscriber numbers for Disney Plus fell for the first time since

01:48the streaming service launched in 2019.

01:52That'll do it for your daily briefing from New York City.

01:54I'm Conway Gittins with the Street.