Renault, Nissan Motor and Mitsubishi Motors on Wednesday stated they had promoted Hadi Zablit to general secretary of their automaking alliance to speed up the business efficiencies throughout the companies.
Zablit, senior vice president of business development at the alliance, takes up the recently created position on Monday and will concentrate on maximizing the contribution of the alliance’s scale to the profits of each company, the automakers stated.
The announcement comes as Nissan and Renault attempt to mend ties amid declining profits a year after the Carlos Ghosn scandal. Nissan brought in a new executive team this week, whereas Renault is set to select a new CEO in the coming weeks.
The 49-year-old, who has both Lebanese and French citizenship, started his career at Renault in 1994 as a production process engineer at the automaker’s powertrain division. He then joined Boston Consulting Group where he eventually became a senior partner, prior to his return to Renault in 2017.
Since then, he has been head of Renault’s digital operations and has played role in other tasks, heads the partnership’s joint ventures for autonomous mobility services.
In his latest role, Zablit will be tasked with supervising special projects to allow the three automakers to work more efficiently. In a statement, the alliance stated that details of these projects would be discussed in the coming weeks.
Zablit’s position is the first executive role to be declared by the alliance in the past year since the arrest of former CEO Carlos Ghosn. Since then, some positions which focus on joint tasks, consisting of communications, have stopped operating.
Previously this year, Renault attempted to forge deeper capital ties with Nissan, only to be rebuffed by the Japanese automaker. This week, Nissan’s new CEO, Makoto Uchida, informed reporters that the alliance had “to benefit each of its partners in terms of revenue and profit”.
Uchida said that closer capital ties with the French automaker were not a focus in the short term.
