07 Corporate Governance Corporate Data Performance Innovation & Power of brand Year 2 Power 88 NISSAN Annual Report 2012 Message from the CFO Nissan wrapped up the first year of its mid-term  business plan with solid performance across  the board. The company is positioned well to  continue pursuing the ambitious goals it set  for itself in Nissan Power 88, and is looking  forward to further growth in market share and  profitability as the plan moves forward. Growing Yet Ready to  Address Any Situation Joseph G. Peter  Chief Financial Officer What changes did Nissan implement in response to last year’s disaster, and what did you  learn? How do you evaluate the first year of the mid-term plan? In fiscal 2011, Nissan’s global sales reached 4,845,000 units, a 15.8% increase from fiscal 2010  and an all-time record. We achieved another record with full-year global market share of 6.4%, up  0.6 points year on year. Our positive sales performance continued to be geographically broad based  as we enjoyed strong growth in many of the world markets. The past year has certainly been challenging as we worked to overcome the impacts of the natural  disasters in Japan and Thailand and the unrelenting strength of the yen. Notwithstanding the  adverse environment, I think it is fair to say that Nissan had a solid start to Nissan Power 88, making  progress in all of the key metrics of our business. Perhaps the key change we did make as a result of our experience during the disasters of 2011 was  to modify our purchasing process to enhance business continuity plans at the parts level, particularly for  critical components, and to mitigate certain supply concentration risks. These modifications, though, are  more evolutionary  kaizen  changes rather than fundamental overhauls to our sourcing strategy. A second example relates to our focus on a strong balance sheet and sustained free cash flow  generation. Our actions in recent years to prioritize free cash flow, eliminate automotive net debt and  reduce reliance on short-term debt greatly helped us to handle last year’s disasters. We now have a  much stronger automotive balance sheet and liquidity position—we continue to benefit from this even  today as we face renewed market volatility related to the euro-zone crisis.  In our localization strategy, for example, we have been working to better balance our manufacturing  and sourcing footprint to our sales footprint since the start of the financial crisis in 2008. Our goals at  that time were to reduce foreign currency volatility and cost. Today, we also see benefit in terms of  reducing supply-chain risk arising from production interruptions. These strategies and initiatives are in  various stages of implementation. In fiscal 2010, we began local production and sales of the V-platform  global compact car in Thailand, India, China and Mexico, and in January 2011, we announced a plan to  increase local production of fully built-up units from approximately 69% in 2010 to 85% by 2015 in the  Americas. This includes production in Smyrna, Tennessee, of the new Infiniti JX and Nissan LEAF in  2012, as well as the production shift of the next-generation Rogue from Japan to Smyrna in 2013.  Broadly speaking, we did not fundamentally shift our strategy, plans or business model as a result of last  year’s disasters. Frankly, our experience during these events validated our existing plans—for the most  part, our responses were continuations of strategies, priorities and plans already in place. 