TOKYO – Nissan board member Toshiyuki Shiga is planning to not seek re-election when his term expires in June, a move that could shake up the automaker's board further after the recent ouster of its Chairman Carlos Ghosn.
Shiga's plan to step down comes after Nissan in November fired Ghosn as chairman and Greg Kelly as representative director following their arrest on suspicion of financial misconduct. Both men deny the allegations, but technically still remain board members who can only be removed by shareholders.
"My current term expires at the end of June. I would like to make elevating Nissan's government my final task, and then it might be time to step back," Shiga, a career Nissan employee who joined the company in 1976, told TV Tokyo earlier this week.
"I think it's time to make room for the next generation."
Nissan declined to comment on the issue.
Shiga, 65, a former Nissan COO, has been a member of automaker's board of directors since 2015 and also served under Ghosn as vice chairman through 2017. He has mainly held roles related to sales and marketing and corporate planning.
The nine members of Nissan's board serve two-year terms, all of which expire in June.
Mounting allegations against Ghosn, including that he continued to under-report his salary through 2018 and made Nissan shoulder his personal investment losses in 2008, has prompted some soul searching at Nissan, which has acknowledged that too much power was concentrated with Ghosn.
The situation has also rattled the partnership between Nissan and Renault, the Japanese automaker's biggest shareholder, where Ghosn remains CEO and chairman.
