Nov. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Ford Motor Co., the second-largest U.S. automaker, will sell 20 percent of Mazda Motor Corp., to raise cash, the Nikkei newswire reported without saying where it got the information.

The shares will be purchased by Mazda, Sumitomo Corp., Itochu Corp. and five insurance companies, the newswire said today. Mazda Chief Executive Officer Hisakazu Imaki will brief the press in Hiroshima about a change in shareholders at 6 p.m., the company said in a faxed statement today.

Ford and Mazda have been in negotiations about the price of the stake, two people with knowledge of the discussions said last month. The sale will give Dearborn, Michigan-based Ford, which rescued Mazda from bankruptcy 12 years ago, cash as the credit crunch makes borrowing more difficult. Ford's U.S. sales plunged 28 percent in October, as the industry heads to the lowest annual tally in 15 years.

Ford has been an investor in Japan's fifth-largest automaker since 1979. The 20 percent holding was valued at 52.5 billion yen ($543 million), based on Hiroshima-based Mazda's current share price in Tokyo. The companies jointly own factories and Ford has based midsized models such as the Fusion sedan on the Mazda6.

The carmaker sold its Jaguar and Land Rover luxury units to India's Tata Motors Ltd. for about $2.4 billion in June.

Ford's sale of Mazda shares would follow General Motors Corp.'s sale of its 3 percent stake in Suzuki Motor Corp. today for 22.4 billion yen.

Ford formed an automatic-transmission joint venture with Mazda in 1969 and acquired a 25 percent stake in the Japanese automaker in 1979. Ford took effective control of Mazda in May 1996, raising its stake to 33.4 percent. Suffering from debt and excess capacity, Mazda lost 102 billion yen in the three years through March 1996.

To contact the reporters on this story: Makiko Kitamura in Tokyo at mkitamura1@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: November 18, 2008 02:17 EST