Japan's Mitsubishi executive behind Nissan alliance has died

Tokyo

Mitsubishi Motors’ former Chief Executive Osamu Masuko, who engineered the automaker’s alliance with Nissan, has died. He was 71. Masuko was named a special advisor to the company when he resigned for health reasons as of Aug. 7. Mitsubishi Motors said he died of heart failure on Aug. 27.

Masuko joined with Nissan’s former chairman Carlos Ghosn in forming an alliance in 2016. Ghosn was arrested and charged with alleged financial misconduct in late 2018, but skipped bail and fled to Lebanon.

After he was named president of Mitsubishi Motors in 2005, Masuko worked hard to rebuild its brand image, which had been hammered by a massive, systematic and decades-long cover-up of defects that surfaced in the early 2000s.