ISTANBUL 

Nissan Motor's CEO shared the company's intent to stop merger talks with Honda Motor on Thursday, according to the Tokyo-based Kyodo news agency.

This came during a meeting between Nissan Motor's CEO Makoto Uchida and Honda’s Toshihiro Mibe at the headquarters of Honda, Japan’s second-largest automaker, in Tokyo, a source familiar with the matter told Kyodo.

The initiative would have created the world’s third-biggest auto group.

The Nissan board had tilted toward scrapping the negotiations after Honda recently floated the idea of Nissan becoming its subsidiary, a proposal that caused opposition within the country's third-biggest automaker, according to sources.

“Honda's proposal to make Nissan its unit, which deviates from its original plan to merge the two brands under a holding company in 2026, came as it grew impatient with what it views as Nissan's slow progress in turning around its business,” according to the news agency.

In December, Honda's Mibe unveiled the merger plan at a news conference, saying that a key premise for the deal was Nissan ramping up turnaround efforts.

According to the sources, Nissan, which had said it would cut 9,000 jobs worldwide and slash its global production capacity by 20% after reporting a more than 90% drop in net profit in the April-September period, has not come up with a comprehensive restructuring plan that convinces Honda.