Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

Nissan and Honda are in exploratory talks about a merger of the two carmakers that would create a $52bn Japanese behemoth, according to people briefed on the matter. 

The two companies are studying a way to combine that would help them better compete at a time when traditional carmakers are grappling with fast-growing Chinese electric-vehicle manufacturers, and slower-than-expected consumer demand for EVs. 

The talks between Nissan and Honda are at an early stage, and there are concerns about a potential political backlash in Japan because a merger of two of the country’s most storied car brands could result in significant job cuts, one of the people with knowledge of the discussions said.

Nissan and Honda announced in March they would team up to develop EVs and have deepened their talks amid uncertainty about what Donald Trump’s return as US president will mean for the car industry.

This year shares in Nissan, which has a cross-shareholding structure with France’s Renault, have fallen 40 per cent, giving it a market capitalisation of $8.2bn. Honda has a market capitalisation of $44bn.

Nissan in November unveiled an emergency turnaround plan that included 9,000 job losses, saying it would cut global production capacity by 20 per cent. The company downgraded its profit guidance for the second time this year after falling to a loss in the July to September quarter.

Nissan has been searching for an anchor investor for several months, and the Financial Times reported last month that “all options” were being considered, including a merger with Honda.

The merger talks between Nissan and Honda were first reported by Nikkei. Nissan said on Tuesday evening: “The content of the [Nikkei] report is not something that has been announced by either company.” 

It added: “As announced in March this year, Honda and Nissan are exploring various possibilities for future collaboration, leveraging each other’s strengths. If there are any updates, we will inform our stakeholders at the appropriate time.” 

Honda issued a similar statement, saying it and Nissan were “exploring various possibilities for future collaboration, leveraging each other’s strengths”.

Renault declined to comment. 

In August, Honda and Nissan said they would roll out an EV by the end of the decade, as the two companies agreed to jointly develop software.

A merger between Nissan and Honda would give the enlarged company a major US manufacturing footprint, helping both brands to potentially minimise the impact of tariffs that Trump is proposing on imports from Mexico. Nissan has significant manufacturing operations in Mexico. 

The auto industry also expects Trump, a long-standing critic of EVs, may slow adoption of them in the US, possibly by watering down emissions rules.

Nissan’s deteriorating financial performance came after it failed to counter a slowdown in global EV sales with a strong hybrid offering: cars that combine battery power with a traditional combustion engine. Sales of these vehicles have helped Toyota.

Nissan has recently been targeted by activist investors including Effissimo Capital Management, a Singapore-based hedge fund known for high profile campaigns against some of the biggest names in Japan, including Toshiba.

Nissan, which owns a stake in smaller rival Mitsubishi Motors, is planning a series of key product launches to try to regain momentum.

If talks on a merger persist between Nissan and Honda, the two companies would need to work out how to reconcile their starkly-different corporate cultures.

The FT reported last month that Renault would be open to selling a portion of its shares in Nissan to Honda as part of a restructuring of its 25-year-old alliance.

One person close to Renault said a stronger relationship between Nissan and Honda could “only be positive” for the French group. 

Renault reorganised its alliance with Nissan last year, with the French group cutting its shareholding in the Japanese company to just under 36 per cent.

Nissan gained voting rights over its 15 per cent stake in Renault. Nissan has a 15 per cent voting stake in Renault.

NEW YORK — The man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare’s CEO has been charged with murder as an act of terrorism, prosecutors said Tuesday as they worked to bring him to a New York court from from a Pennsylvania jail.

Luigi Mangione already was charged with murder in the Dec. 4 killing of Brian Thompson, but the terror allegation is new.

Under New York law, such a charge can be brought when an alleged crime is “intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, influence the policies of a unit of government by intimidation or coercion and affect the conduct of a unit of government by murder, assassination or kidnapping.”

Mangione’s New York lawyer has not commented on the case.

Thompson, 50, was shot dead as he walked to a Manhattan hotel where Minnesota-based UnitedHealthcare — the United States’ biggest medical insurer — was holding an investor conference.

After days of intense police searches and publicity, Mangione was arrested on Dec. 9 after being spotted in a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania. New York police officials have said Mangione was carrying the gun used to kill Thompson, a passport and various fake IDs, including one that the suspected shooter presented to check into a New York hostel.

The 26-year-old was charged with Pennsylvania gun and forgery offenses and locked up there without bail. His Pennsylvania lawyer has questioned the evidence for the forgery charge and the legal grounding for the gun charge. The attorney also has said Mangione would fight extradition to New York.

The indictment could help move along procedural steps toward extraditing the suspect.

Hours after his arrest, the Manhattan district attorney’s office filed paperwork charging him with murder and other offenses. The indictment builds on that paperwork.

Investigators’ working theory is that Mangione, an Ivy League computer science grad from a prominent Maryland family, was propelled by anger at the U.S. health care system. A law enforcement bulletin obtained by The Associated Press week said that when arrested, he was carrying a handwritten letter that called health insurance companies “parasitic” and complained about corporate greed.

Mangione repeatedly posted on social media about how spinal surgery last year had eased his chronic back pain, encouraging people with similar conditions to speak up for themselves if told they just had to live with it.

In a Reddit post in late April, he advised someone with a back problem to seek additional opinions from surgeons and, if necessary, say the pain made it impossible to work.

“We live in a capitalist society,” Mangione wrote. “I’ve found that the medical industry responds to these key words far more urgently than you describing unbearable pain and how it’s impacting your quality of life.”

He was never a UnitedHealthcare client, according to the insurer.

Mangione apparently cut himself off from his family and close friends in recent months. His family reported him missing to San Francisco authorities in November.

Thompson, who grew up on a farm in small-town Iowa, was trained as an accountant. A married father of two high-schoolers, he had worked at the giant UnitedHealth Group for 20 years and became CEO of its insurance arm in 2021.

His killing kindled a fiery outpouring of resentment toward U.S. health insurance companies, as Americans swapped stories online and elsewhere of being denied coverage, left in limbo as doctors and insurers disagreed, and stuck with sizeable bills.

The shooting also rattled C-suites, as “wanted” posters with other health care executives’ names and faces appeared on New York streets and an outpouring of online vitriol prompted police to warn that there could be an “elevated threat.”

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

KPMG has narrowed the gap with its larger rivals in the past year, according to figures posted on Tuesday that showed it had the strongest revenue growth of the Big Four accounting and consulting firms.

The firm recorded global revenue of $38.4bn in the 12 months to September 30, a 5.4 per cent increase on the previous year. Stripping out the effect of currency fluctuations, the rise was 5.1 per cent.

That eclipsed the growth at Deloitte, EY and PwC, and each of KPMG’s three main business lines posted growth rates that were at or near the top of the pack. The strong revenue growth narrowed a gap that had widened in recent years between KPMG and the other three firms.

The firms’ advisory businesses have been held back since the end of the pandemic by a slowdown in demand for technology services and a dearth of merger and acquisition work.

But there have been stronger performances in the less economically-sensitive audit business, KPMG’s revenues were up 6.2 per cent to $13.4bn, and tax advice. KPMG’s global tax and legal services business was up 9.6 per cent to $8.7bn.

Bill Thomas, KPMG’s global chief executive, said the growth reflected investments the firm had made in technology and training, and faster-growing business lines such as artificial intelligence and environmental, social and governance (ESG) work. A year ago, KPMG extended Thomas’s leadership term by 12 months to September 2026 to see through a three-year investment programme.

“Commitment to our multidisciplinary model has also fuelled greater synergies, growth and cross-border collaboration across our network,” he said.

The headline growth rates masked significant differences in different parts of the world. In Asia-Pacific, where professional services firms have been struggling with an economic slowdown in China and a political backlash against the Big Four in Australia, KPMG’s local currency growth was just 0.5 per cent. It also shrank its headcount in the region by 2 per cent in the year to September.

Revenue was up 4.2 per cent to $15.2bn in the Americas, its largest region, but it also shrank its workforce there, through more judicious hiring, tougher performance reviews of existing staff and some lay-offs in parts of the advisory business, as it worked to protect partner profits.