Nissan Motor Co Ltd has denounced a media report the company will soon be acquired by Hitachi Construction Machinery Co.

An October 5 Nikkei Report article reported that the two companies are currently negotiating an operating and capital alliance between their forklift businesses.

Nissan spokesman Mitsuru Yonekawa tells Forkliftaction.com News articles mentioning Hitachi Construction's impending acquisition of Nissan Forklift Co are "incorrect and speculative".

Hitachi Construction, which owns forklift manufacturer TCM Corp, turned TCM into a wholly-owned subsidiary in December 2009 (Forkliftaction.com News #427). The parent company absorbed the wheel loader operations in April 2010, leaving TCM to focus on forklifts. Nikkei Report says TCM was ranked fourth, with an 8.4% market share, in Japan last year.

Nissan Forklift Co is fifth, according to Nikkei Report, with a 6.8% share of the domestic market. Together, the two forklift businesses would have 15.2% of the Japanese forklift market, closing in on third-placed Komatsu Ltd.

Nissan spun off its forklift operations in October 2010, turning the business into a wholly-owned unit (Forkliftaction.com News #473). It has plants in Japan, the US, Spain and Sweden.