Hon Hai actively seeking Nissan partnership: Source

Taipei, Feb. 7 (CNA) Taiwan-based manufacturing giant Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. is actively seeking a partnership with Japan's Nissan Motor Co., according to a source familiar with the matter.

The source told CNA Friday that Hon Hai Chairman Young Liu (劉揚偉) sent the company's chief strategy officer (CSO) Jun Seki to Japan over the Lunar New Year to meet with Nissan executives amid reports that a planned merger with rival automaker Honda has been shelved.

Seki spent 33 years with Nissan, once serving as vice chief operating officer of the Nissan-Renault-Mitsubishi alliance.

Honda and Nissan had been scheduled to finish the negotiations and sign a formal merger agreement in June, paving the path for a new holding company to list its shares in Tokyo in August 2026.

But Japanese media reports Wednesday suggested that Nissan was preparing to pull out of the negotiations because of its opposition to making Nissan a subsidiary of Honda.

A Financial Times report Thursday said some of Nissan's board members were open to a partnership with Hon Hai.

Hon Hai previously expressed an interest in buying French automaker Renault's minority stake in Nissan, with Seki flying to France in mid-December to discuss the matter.

In 1999, Renault injected funds into Nissan and became the largest shareholder.

Renault subsequently began unloading its Nissan holdings in stages. According to Japan-based Diamond Online, the French company still has a 35 percent stake. This includes a 22.1 percent stake that the French automaker has tentatively transferred to Natixis, a French bank.

A Japanese auto executive told CNA that any partnership between Hon Hai and Nissan would also depend on the attitude of Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.

In recent years, Hon Hai has intensified its efforts in EV development as part of its "3 plus 3" strategy to diversify from contract manufacturing into hardware and software capabilities.

The initiative covers three emerging industries -- EVs, robots and digital health care -- which the company said it is developing via artificial intelligence, semiconductor and communications technologies, with EVs as the core business.