Carlos Gone

From hero to bad guy, the fall of Carlos Ghosn is dramatic. With him gone, Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi, the world’s largest automaker, looks set for a bitter boardroom tussle and an uncertain future.

- Sumant Banerji

HE WAS AMONG the most celebrated chief executives around the world. A master at scripting turnarounds, blessed with a sharp mind and astute business sense, 64-year-old Carlos Ghosn was the toast of the global automobile industry. In 2017, the grand Franco-Japanese Alliance of 19 years, Renault Nissan, with the addition of Mitsubishi that was merged in 2016, stumped global pundits by emerging as the largest automaker in the world, leaving Toyota, Volkswagen and General Motors in its wake. Ghosn’s stock was at an all-time high.

In an interview with Business Today in July from Tokyo, Ghosn talked of what made the partnership tick. “We have a very special way of working together. In this Alliance, we are extremely strict in the management of resources. We do a lot of things together where the rule is we do not duplicate things in engineering, manufacturing, purchasing, supply chain and in many other important areas where we collaborate. But at the same time we retain the autonomy of each of these operating companies with its own culture, brand, history, and priorities in terms of markets. This way we have the unity of one company and diversity of multiple companies,” Ghosn said, explaining the unique success of the Alliance.

Yet, all it took was a few hours on November 19 for the fairytale story to take a bitter turn. As Ghosn landed at Japan’s Haneda airport in his private jet for what was a routine work trip (he divided his time between Paris and Tokyo), he was arrested. An investigation by Nissan showed that he had under reported his salary to the Tokyo Stock Exchange securities between 2011 and 2015.