Mitsubishi Motors' ailments are in many ways symptomatic of what is wrong with Japanese business.
In the car industry, Mitsubishi Motors wants to abolish its entire seniority-based pay structure this April.
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On the other hand, investors have punished Mitsubishi Motors (No. 23) for its sluggish reform efforts.
Meanwhile, DaimlerChrysler is handing responsibility for the Smart to Mitsubishi Motors, its new Japanese partner.
Takashi Nishioka, currently chairman of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, will take over as chief executive at Mitsubishi Motors.
The intended 540bn yen of new funding is the third bailout for Mitsubishi Motors since last May.
Other carmakers such as Mitsubishi Motors and Mazda have also reported a sharp drop in Chinese sales.
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Mitsubishi Motors Australia has declined to comment on reports that its South Australia plant may be sold off.
The world's automakers ought to take a lesson from the mess that DaimlerChrysler has wrought at Mitsubishi Motors.
Mitsubishi Motors has forecast a net loss of 472bn yen in its current financial year to March 2005.
US-German carmaker DaimlerChrylser, a 30% shareholder in Mitsubishi Motors, decided in April 2004 not to pump in any more money.
Mitsubishi Motors, along with most other big firms that have recently announced a restructuring, did so only because bankruptcy was threatening.
"We're not commenting on speculation, " said Charles Iles of Mitsubishi Motors Australia.
In January, Mitsubishi Motors issued its third profits warning in nine months, and cut its sales forecasts for the year to March 2005.
Mitsubishi Motors has been hit hard by revelations that the group and its truck division Mitsubishi Fuso had been hiding defects to prevent product recalls.
The market wasn't reassured: Next day Mitsubishi Motors stock dropped 14%.
Its 1.6-liter engine and transmission are provided by Japan's Mitsubishi Motors.
It was an inauspicious start for Kawasoe, who had been appointed to Mitsubishi Motors' top job after three company executives were arrested for paying off gangsters.
You would be unlikely to confuse Mitsubishi Motors's latest kei car with a Mercedes or a Lexus, but it does have plush seats and a roomy interior.
DaimlerChrysler bought a 34% stake in Japan's ailing Mitsubishi Motors hoping to perform a similar trick, and took a stake in Hyundai Motors, South Korea's largest car maker.
Nissan Motor lost 1.5% and Mitsubishi Motors finished down 2%.
Among individual stocks, Japanese vehicle maker Mitsubishi Motors Corp. jumped more than 16 percent after raising its group net profit forecast for the year ending March 2013, Kyodo News reported.
The Consumer Union, which owns Consumer Reports, is no stranger to legal battles with automakers over their ratings having survived previous controversies with Isuzu Motors, Suzuki Motor, and Mitsubishi Motors.
In a similar payoff scandal, four executives of Mitsubishi Motors were arrested in October on suspicion of paying more than nine million yen to Tei and another sokaiya gangster since 1995, Kyodo said.
For legal control of a Japanese company, an acquirer generally needs to have at least a 34% stake (note that when Renault took over Nissan, it had a 37% stake, and when DaimlerChrysler got Mitsubishi Motors, it had 34%).
Ford's other main rival, DaimlerChrysler, may be taking a risk buying 34% of Mitsubishi Motors, just as the Japanese firm has revealed that it has covered up product defects for 20 years, but at least it has used Mitsubishi's problems to force down the asking price and to install its own man as chief operating officer.
Toyota already was much more conservative about vehicle electrification beyond conventional hybrids than rivals General Motors and Nissan, who established the U.S. market and have been joined by Ford, Mitsubishi and others.
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