The company posted a net loss of 83.2 billion yen ($1.4 billion) in the fiscal third quarter to December, blaming the global economic slowdown and the strong yen.
Chief executive Carlos Ghosn - who salvaged Nissan from near bankruptcy when he was parachuted in from Renault a decade ago - says the automaker's "worst assumptions on the state of the global economy have been met or exceeded."
"The global auto industry is in turmoil - Nissan is no exception," he said.
Unfortunately for the last four or five months systematically the worst scenario happened.
"The worst scenario in term of yen, the worst scenario in term of recession, the worst scenario in term of decline and the worst scenario in term of even financing because the financial crisis which started in September was supposed to be solved by now. Well it's not."
Nissan says it will shrink its global workforce in the next financial year to March 2010 from 235,000 people to 215,000.
"In response to this crisis - which is not of our making - we have to re-evaluate our global headcount," Mr Ghosn said.
Nissan made an operating loss of 99.2 billion yen ($1.6 billion) in the third quarter as revenue tumbled 34.4 per cent to 1.82 trillion yen ($25.9 billion).
Nissan sold 731,000 vehicles worldwide in the third quarter - down 18.6 per cent from a year earlier.
Source: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/02/09/2486628.htm 
