Tokyo, Feb 18 (EFE).- Nissan on Tuesday approved the appointment of four new directors, including CEO Makoto Uchida, who took charge as the head of the carmaker in October after an upheaval caused by the arrest of scam-accused CEO Carlos Ghosn.

The other three executives formally incorporated include Chief Operating Officer Ashwani Gupta, Executive Vice President Hideyuki Sakamoto, and Pierre Fleuriot, also a director at French carmaker Renault SA, which has had a decade-long alliance with Nissan.

The decisions were taken at a shareholders' meeting of Nissan. Renault Chairman Jean-Dominique Senard was added as a director in an earlier meeting.

Uchida, also the chairman of the company, replaced Hiroto Saikawa, who quit the company's leadership in mid-September due to a series of financial transactions that the management deemed improper, although not illegal.

He was accused of unduly inflating a salary bonus with company shares, manipulating the terms and payment date.

Saikawa had been appointed at the top post after Ghosn was arrested in Tokyo on Nov.19, 2018, and accused of under-reporting compensation and breach of trust.

The French citizen, who holds multiple citizenships, subsequently fled the country in December as he was out on bail. He reappeared in Lebanon in an escape that grabbed international headlines.

During the meeting, Uchida explained the corporate-level changes the company was implementing to overcome the crisis and was criticized by some shareholders over the decision to slash dividend payments.

Saikawa, who had formally held a post in the board of directors until now, was replaced by the shareholders meeting at a convention center in Yokohama, the city where the Nissan headquarters are situated.

The shareholders met after Nissan group last week announced its results for the third quarter of the current financial year (ending December), marking its first quarterly loss since 2009, while the net operating profit dropped 87.6 percent during the last three quarters, compared to the same period in 2018.

After announcing the results, Nissan cut its profit forecast for the current fiscal ears to around $592 million, the lowest in 11 years.

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