Nidec moves to sell its car and appliance motor units before bidders sell the whole company

The new chief sells what the scandal broke

Two days after replacing Mitsuya Kishida, chief executive Michio Kaida stood up in Kyoto and put Nidec's low-profit household-appliance and automotive-motor businesses on the block, pointing the company at data-center equipment, power generation and energy storage instead ¹². "Our most pressing priority now is to return to our origins as an enterprise," the 70-year-old said ¹. The 33-page plan↗ forecasts ¥2.8 trillion of sales and ¥200 billion of operating profit for the year to March 2027 ¹.

One sale is signed: Nidec Components goes to a Carlyle entity for ¥102.98 billion, with completion due 1 December ³⁴. The automotive arm now up for sale houses Nidec's half of eMotors, a 50/50 venture with Stellantis in France employing 700 people; Stellantis did not reply when asked whether a divestment touches it ¹.

A ¥565 billion loss with no signature

The year to March 2026 closed at a ¥564.6 billion net loss, against a revised ¥84.6 billion profit a year earlier, after ¥632.1 billion of impairments ⁵⁶. PwC Japan disclaimed an audit opinion for a second straight year↗: executives involved in, aware of, or giving false explanations about the improper accounting still hold posts in financial reporting ⁵. The stock fell as much as 20% on 1 October and closed the day down 11%, taking a company worth roughly ¥8 trillion in 2021 to ¥2.5 trillion ⁷¹.

The deadline belongs to the exchange

The Tokyo Stock Exchange put Nidec on special alert in October 2025 and wants its internal-controls report↗ by the end of this month; thin fixes could mean delisting ⁵⁸. "The risk of delisting is at a realistic level," says Takatoshi Hayashi of Kwansei Gakuin University ⁵.

Kaida is pushing PwC for an audit opinion this month, and the auditor says it is working toward one by the end of October ⁸. The board carrying that review just fired, unanimously, the chief executive hired to fix the culture, over what chair Soichiro Sakuma called inappropriate remarks tied to financial reporting ¹⁹. A second clock runs alongside: as The Inference laid out on 2 October, Nidec must roll roughly ¥600 billion of bank lines on books its auditor has not signed, with the banks' answer due 28 October.

The motors still sell

Strip out the write-downs and the machine still turns: Daiwa credit analyst Hiroki Uchida sees a likely operating gain excluding impairments and calls concerns about bond-redemption liquidity limited ⁷. PwC's own representatives say the disclaimer reflects missing information in a complicated investigation, not wrongdoing ¹⁸.

A call option with an expiry date

The rout has left Nidec a much-weakened takeover target, with activists circling and more than ¥1.1 trillion of write-downs and charges disclosed ¹¹⁰. Founder Shigenobu Nagamori, 82, title-less since February, still holds 8.3% of the stock ¹. If the listing survives the month and the sales land, bidders get a smaller, cleaner target; if the report disappoints, the breakup happens on the exchange's terms, or nobody's. The stock is a call option on a takeover bid, and the exchange holds the expiry date.