Biography|Makoto Uchida — The Board Put Him in This Yokohama Tower

On 8 October 2019 Nissan's board, meeting in the post-Ghosn governance structure it had just built, named Makoto Uchida representative executive officer, president and CEO.

The company's own release is datelined Yokohama. The tower at 1-1 Takashima, Nishi-ku, is the global headquarters, finished in 2009 on the Minato Mirai waterfront.

He was fifty-three. He had been president of Dongfeng Motor Co., the fifty-fifty China joint venture, since April 2018, and chairman of Nissan's China management committee.

The first timetable said the appointment would take effect no later than 1 January 2020. Nissan then brought it forward. He took the chair on 1 December 2019.

On 2 December he held the inaugural press conference in this building. Japanese and English transcripts went out the same day from the Nissan newsroom.

He was not a factory lifer. He had come from Nissho Iwai in 2003, worked purchasing in the Renault-Nissan Alliance, spent less than two years at Renault Samsung Motors in Korea, then ran the China joint venture.

The job he walked into was a repair job. Hiroto Saikawa had resigned weeks earlier. Carlos Ghosn was already out. Operating profit was falling. The Alliance with Renault was raw.

This tower is a public building with a ground-floor gallery. It is not a private office. The pin is the headquarters that issued the appointment and hosted the first press conference.

He held the title until 31 March 2025. The board named Ivan Espinosa as successor, effective 1 April.

The visitor who stands on Takashima-dori is looking at the same glass box that carried both dates: the day the board chose him, and the day he started.

Photo: ApaApJt, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons