Chris Bryant, Columnist

Emmanuel Macron Awaits a Visit From His Old Banker Chums

Getting Renault-Nissan deal across the line will demand acute political nous.

March 29, 2018 at 8:50 AM UTC

Chris Bryant is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering industrial companies in Europe. Previously, he was a reporter for the Financial Times.

1522313852_rno — Photographer: Chesnot/Getty Images

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Merging two companies to create one with a single listing is bread-and-butter stuff for investment bankers. Doing so with Renault SA and Nissan Motor Co., which Bloomberg News says is under discussion, would be nothing short of revolutionary. For once, the bankers are really going to earn those fat fees.

The two companies (three if you count Nissan's 34 percent stake in Mitsubishi) have a famously byzantine structure: Renault owns 43 percent of Nissan, while Nissan owns 15 percent of Renault. Unpicking those cross-shareholdings will be extremely difficult, not least because the French state will demand assurances that Renault won't be disadvantaged (it owns 15 percent too). That doesn't mean the Renault-Nissan alliance boss Carlos Ghosn shouldn't try.