Is Carlos Ghosn just a Scapegoat?

• Published Month : Tuesday, 03 Dec 2019 01:00 pm

Carlos Ghosn's rise as chairman of the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance took years, but his collapse was rapider and bigger, than any other executive across the world with his knack. Probably, Ghosn was not supposed to thrive in Japan as believed by certain sources, but he wasn’t supposed to fall like this. He had first made headlines in the year 1999 when, in a country known for its distrust of foreigners.

Nissan, the Japanese carmaker was in $35 billion debt, provided lifetime employment to a bloated work force along with producing a fleet of the car type anyone would dread of getting at the rental counter.

Carlos Ghosn, then 45 and a vice president at Renault, had helped administer a turnaround at the moderate French automaker that had agreed to spend almost $5.4 billion towards buying 36.8% stake in Nissan Motors. Nissan had within the span of six years then surpassed Honda and became Japan’s Number 2 auto making company. Along with its market capitalization getting quintupled and its operating margin had rising to almost tenfold. Furthermore, Titan pickup trucks, Altima sedans & Murano S.U.V.s made Nissan a leading player of the United States market — a success that Wall Street once believed was impossible.

And by the beginning of 2000, Ghosn was made the head of the Renault-Nissan alliance- the first person who was parallelly serving as the chief executive of two Fortune Global 500 corporations. In the year 2004, Ghosn was awarded a Blue Ribbon Medal for his extraordinary contributions by Emperor Akihito that made him the first overseas business leader to receive the honor.

On the other hand, there were people who scoffed at Ghosn’s celebrity from the very begining. He had been facing distrust from the Japanese policymakers as well as business establishments. As per the sources, the stickiest issue assumed was Mr. Ghosn’s remuneration. He was approximately receiving almost 11 times more salary than that of Toyota’s chairman, the world’s largest carmaker.

Ghosn had to fly all over the world by the means of a series of Nissan-owned Gulfstream private jets, including a G650, one of the costliest and lavish jets. As chairman of Renault, Nissan, and Mitsubishi, 3 fortune car companies situated on two continents halfway around the globe from each another, Ghosn had to spend a substantial amount of time flying over Nissan's jets between France & Japan with frequent layovers in Brazil, the United States and Lebanon.

According to several reports Nissan paid almost 8,000 euros per month for an apartment used by Ghosn exclusively in Amsterdam. Also, Nissan paid approximately $9 million in 2012 for a salmon-hued mansion for him to live whenever he visited. Furthermore, Nissan paid rent for his Tokyo’s flat where he lived with his family. But, then his days started crashing down with Nissan seizing the keys of all of his frequented properties.

In November 2018, he was alleged for underreporting his compensation from Nissan filings for several years and was soon removed from the position. And then a week later he was arrested with limited access to outside world. Nevertheless, he is out on bail and is awaiting trial in Japan.

However, Ghosn denied to all the allegations over and also stated that he has wrongly been accused. Moreover, he has a number of supporters who claim him to not guilty. There is a Facebook page with name “Support Carlos Ghosn” as well as several tweets and posts over Twitter favoring him.