'It finally clears a cloud over Mazda,' said Koji Endo, an analyst at Credit Suisse Securities (Japan) Ltd. in Tokyo. 'Having new stable shareholders will eliminate worries about Ford's move on Mazda's stake.' Mark Truby, a Ford spokesman, declined to comment. 'Nothing has been decided,' said Ken Haruki, a spokesman for Hiroshima, Japan-based Mazda. Ford holds 33.4 percent in Mazda and has been an investor in Japan's fifth-largest automaker since 1979. The companies jointly own factories, and Ford has based midsized models such as the Fusion sedan on Mazda's Mazda6. Ford has posted $23.9 billion in losses since 2005, and faces an increasing drain on cash as sales fall in its home market. Ford's shares have tumbled 66 percent this year. They slid 15 cents, or 6.1 percent, to $2.30 Wednesday. Mazda, which has slumped about 56 percent this year, dropped 8.4 percent to 261 yen as of 9:30 a.m. on the Tokyo Stock Exchange today. The stock reached 52-week high of 704 yen on Nov. 1. The possible sale of Ford's stake in Mazda was first reported Oct. 11 by state-run Japanese broadcaster NHK and by Nikkei English News, which named trading houses Sumitomo Corp. and Itochu Corp. as prospective buyers. Denso Corp., a Japanese partsmaker affiliated with Toyota Motor Corp., was asked by Ford to purchase part of the Mazda stake, Nikkei English News reported today, without saying where it got the information. Miwa Kurokawa, a Denso spokeswoman, declined to comment.