Okay, so here is the skinny: the Renault-Nissan Alliance and Daimler AG are combining forces to craft an ultimate strategic cooperation. The Renault-Nissan Alliance is already the most successful partnership in the automotive industry with revenues over 86.5 billion Euros in 2009, a footprint in over 190 countries, and an employment of over 350,000 people world-wide. And Daimler is just as successful in the automotive industry, as well as a huge player in the financial sector. But despite each company’s individual achievements, they both found an advantage out of partnering-up: “Daimler and the Renault-Nissan Alliance are combining common interests to form a promising foundation for a successful, strategically sound cooperation that is based on a number of very concrete and attractive project cooperations. Our skills complement each other very well. Right away we are strengthening our competitiveness in the small and compact car segment and are reducing our CO2 footprint – both on a long-term basis. We know that we can make brand-typical products based on shared architectures. The individual brand identities will remain unaffected.”, said Dr. Dieter Zetsche, Chairman of the Board of Management of Daimler AG and head of Mercedes-Benz Cars.

The cooperation will highlight the following four projects:

• New common architecture for small vehicles
  • The launches for the jointly developed models will take place in 2013.
• Powertrains
  • Both are going to focus on sharing each other’s highly fuel-efficient, diesel and gasoline engines.
• Collaboration on light vehicles
  • Mercedes-Benz Vans will add a new entry-level vehicle in 2012 that will produced at the Renault plant in Maubeuge, France. Both companies will benefit from higher sales, more efficient capacity utilization, and a joint investment burden – which will result in a healthier overall cost basis.
• Equity exchanges
  • The companies are going to exchange, benchmark and create synergies from their one-time cross-shareholding structure. Daimler will get 3.1% of Renault’s newly issued shares and 3.1% of Nissan’s existing shares; and Renault and Nissan will both receive 1.55% of Daimler’s shares.

After all is said, the main goal of this cooperation is to: “…create lasting value for the Renault-Nissan Alliance and Daimler as we work on broadening and strengthening our product offering, efficiently utilizing all available resources and developing the innovative technologies required in the coming decade.” – Carlos Ghosn, Chairman and CEO of the Renault-Nissan Alliance.