Ghosn: Escape of the century...

[Geneman]

unfriggin believable . good for him... likely had to pay a huge number of people off to make it happen.. but wtf . ...it worked, and staying for " justice " in japan was not an option..

https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2019/12/30/world/middleeast/ap-lebanon-carlos-ghosn.html

I love it! I hope it was a 007 style exit in a GTR.

. . . .Well .. .Japan is an island. Probably took a plane.

[Seahawk]

Thanks for posting about Ghosn, first I have heard of him. Interesting story!

This article isn’t behind a wall and adds some context.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/nissan-ceo-carlos-ghosns-great-escape-writes-a-hollywood-ending-to-japanese-imprisonment

TOKYO—Former Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn has made a dramatic escape from Japan, where he was under house arrest, and has now found refuge in Lebanon, where he grew up and owns a home. And if his saga sounds like something out of cinematic thriller, well, stay tuned. Roughly a week before Ghosn made it to Beirut, he was cheerfully discussing a possible movie version of his life with a mega-Hollywood producer in his Tokyo home.

A friend of Ghosn says, “He was keen on the idea of a documentary or film exposing his unjust treatment by the Japanese criminal justice system. I asked him, ‘What do you think will be the conclusion?’

“He made a tiny smile and said, ‘Oh, it will be a surprise ending.’”

Surprise, surprise!

Carlos Ghosn who once found himself trapped in a dire scenario scripted by the Japanese government, Tokyo prosecutors, and a dubious faction of Nissan, has rewritten the narrative. He has now what appears to be a happy ending. And perhaps even Japan’s elite secretly are happy to see him gone. Almost everyone saves face; almost everyone wins.

Read the whole article...fascinating look into a part of Japan's legal system.

[lendaddy]

Been following this for months, not sure the guy should be celebrated.

Originally Posted by lendaddy

Been following this for months, not sure the guy should be celebrated.

Agree. But it's a very cool story. Whatever he may or may not have done, he is a seriously good car exec.

[lendaddy]

Originally Posted by madcorgi

Agree. But it's a very cool story. Whatever he may or may not have done, he is a seriously good car exec.

In ways yes, he was very much of the "iron fist" approach to management.

[slow&rusty]

Originally Posted by madcorgi

Agree. But it's a very cool story. Whatever he may or may not have done, he is a seriously good car exec.

I don't agree with this.

He created a very stressful and demeaning work environment, he also shifted the culture of the company with lots of heated disagreements between his management and the Japanese management. There were multiple resignations and lots of talent left because of this etc etc. None of this ever made into the mainstream media.

Nissan needed a tune-up but it wasn't Ghosn.

[cairns]

I've been following the story for months in the WSJ. I found it incredible. What's happening to Nissan and Renault right now is ample evidence that he was the only one who could hold this "alliance" together. And he was by comparative standards underpaid.

[cairns]

He created a very stressful and demeaning work environment, he also shifted the culture of the company with lots of heated disagreements between his management and the Japanese management. There were multiple resignations and lots of talent left because of this etc etc. None of this ever made into the mainstream media.

I think you should reassess. The MSM never discussed it but they never cover business very well anyway. The WSJ has had extensive coverage.

if you think they had heated disagreements under Ghosn you should see how they're acting now.

Without Carlos Ghosn, the Nissan-Renault Alliance Has Started to Crack
In the year after the former chief was arrested, discord between the companies has stalled cooperation and marred efficiency
Carlos Ghosn, then chairman of the Renault-Nissan alliance, prepared for a television interview in September 2018, shortly before his arrest in Japan. SIMON DAWSON/BLOOMBERG NEWS
By Nick Kostov and Sean McLain
Dec. 25, 2019 11:55 am ET

It took a year without Carlos Ghosn for the auto makers he once led to realize what he had been doing for two decades: keeping Nissan Motor Co. and Renault SA from coming apart at the seams.

Since Mr. Ghosn was arrested in November 2018, insiders at the companies said the two partners, lacking a chief to impose order, have reverted to the corporate equivalent of a nasty and brutish state of nature.

Renault has pushed a merger that would secure its ties with Nissan, at one point even briefly weighing a takeover in response to the arrest. Nissan has tried to negotiate a sale of part of Renault’s stake in Nissan. Engineers have worked to avoid cooperating on vehicle design, said people at the companies.

The discord is threatening the viability of both car makers. The share prices of both Nissan and Renault have dropped by a third since Mr. Ghosn’s arrest. In the first 11 months of the year, the two companies sold more than half a million fewer cars than they did in the same period the previous year. Both lost money on selling vehicles in the first half of the year.

“We are talking about an issue of survival. There is no question about that,” Renault Chairman Jean-Dominique Senard said in an interview.

Nissan in a written statement said the alliance helped it compete better. “At the same time, each Alliance company has its own business strategy, and naturally there may be instances where there are differences in approach, perspective or opinion.”

At the time of his arrest, Mr. Ghosn oversaw both companies as chairman of Nissan and chief executive of Renault. Renault owns 43.4% of Nissan, while Nissan owns 15% of Renault as part of an auto-making alliance stretching back two decades. Yet there were no formal rules compelling cooperation between the companies. Instead, they would meet regularly to negotiate what they would do together. Current and former executives said Mr. Ghosn fostered a system in which no one could be forced to cooperate, except by Mr. Ghosn himself.

Rocky Alliance
Renault and Nissan's partnership has been under stress since the arrest of their former leader, Carlos Ghosn, in Tokyo on Nov. 19, 2018. Stock prices, car sales and profits have all fallen sharply.

The strife has absorbed management attention and distracted the companies from working together. In the past year, more than a dozen executives have left the auto makers, and both have ousted their chief executives. An alliance meeting this spring nearly didn’t happen because the partners initially refused to share confidential data about their business performance.

The global car market is entering a danger zone, with China shrinking and the U.S. dependent on generous financing for buyers. Companies must spend billions to meet tighter emissions regulations and develop technologies such as electric vehicles.

Nearly a decade after they were introduced, the companies’ flagship electric vehicles—the Nissan Leaf and Renault Zoe hatchbacks—still share few parts. The companies said they are developing electric vehicles with shared components that will be sold in coming years.

“This should have happened before 2010, and it is still planned for ‘soon,’ ” said Louis Schweitzer, a former Renault CEO who was the original architect of the alliance with Nissan in 1999.

A Renault merger proposal advocated by Mr. Senard earlier this year was meant to address those challenges. United under a single post-Ghosn leader, the idea went, Nissan and Renault could more effectively slash costs and combine their technology investments.

Many at Nissan, though, feel they are better off addressing their problems on their own, especially since Renault doesn’t even operate in the U.S., Nissan’s biggest market and the source of many of its problems.


An assembly line at the Renault factory in Maubeuge in northeastern France. PHOTO: ETIENNE LAURENT/EPA/SHUTTERSTOCK
Such skepticism about the value of broad partnerships has widened among car executives. Consumer tastes and vehicle styles vary so widely between the major markets that it is hard to productively cooperate, they said.

Nissan and Renault have bickered constantly over the past two decades, each complaining that the other side slowed down the development process with its demands. Nissan engineers felt that Renault leaned too much on the Japanese company’s technology, said people close to Nissan. Renault engineers felt that their Japanese counterparts were too unwilling to compromise, said people close to Renault.

Both sides regularly blamed delays on the quirks of working with a foreign company, said a former alliance executive. “Every single month there would be a struggle, or a conflict, or different opinions,” the former executive said. It was usually Mr. Ghosn’s job to broker an agreement between the two sides, the person said.

Although Nissan criticized Mr. Ghosn as a dictator, he often curbed the worst of the two companies’ infighting. The globe-trotting executive was initially dispatched by Renault in 1999 to turn around Nissan, and his success there propelled him into the chief executive’s job at Renault as well.

[cairns]

(continued)

Shortly after the arrest, a group of Renault executives, outside lawyers and financial advisers met frequently on the seventh floor of their headquarters near Paris to come up with a response. They called themselves Groupe Orange, a combination of Renault yellow and Nissan red.

The group worked through various scenarios, including a possible hostile takeover of Nissan, but that option was quickly dismissed because any victory would be pyrrhic, said one person involved in Groupe Orange. People at Nissan say any attempted takeover from Renault would create a revolt against French control, likely opposition from the Japanese state and mass resignations from Nissan engineers.

Instead, Groupe Orange decided to push for a merger. Mr. Senard, formerly chief executive of French tire maker Michelin, took on the task of persuading Nissan after he was appointed Renault’s chairman in late January. He quickly ran into resistance from Nissan veterans who wanted the Yokohama company to remain independent. Mr. Senard said the two sides aren’t currently talking about a merger.

The friction spread even to parts of the alliance where the companies had begun to work more closely together.

Renault and Nissan produce some vehicles and parts for each other to save money, particularly in Europe. At its factories in Spain and France, Renault makes engines and commercial vehicles for Nissan to sell under its own brand in Europe. As sales fell, Renault raised the prices it charged to Nissan, people familiar with the decision said, angering Nissan.


A Nissan Leaf e+ electric vehicle. PHOTO: KIYOSHI OTA/BLOOMBERG NEWS
At the same time, Renault complained about paying what it views as inflated prices for Renault versions of Nissan pickup trucks that the Japanese company produces in Barcelona.

The tense atmosphere, particularly at the top of Renault and Nissan, made striking deals difficult. “Both leaders at the time built their identity on opposing the other company,” said a person close to Renault, in reference to former Renault CEO Thierry Bolloré and former Nissan CEO Hiroto Saikawa.

The biggest problem at the alliance is a dramatic fall in net profit at Nissan. In its final full year under Mr. Ghosn it earned nearly $7 billion. Now the company estimates it will make $1 billion in the year ending March 31. Those weak results feed through to Renault, which, as a large shareholder of Nissan, records its share of Nissan’s profit on its own bottom line.

In the U.S., Nissan’s largest market, Mr. Saikawa, who was ousted as CEO in September, sought to lift profit by slashing low-margin sales to rental car agencies and raising prices for regular car buyers. Sales did fall—they were down 16% in November—but net profit hasn’t risen.

China, seen as a growth driver until recently, is shrinking, too. In November, Nissan issued its third quarterly profit warning this year.

The situation is no better at Renault, which relies on slow-growing Europe for more than half its sales. A new version of its best-selling model, the Clio hatchback, faced production issues, which delayed its launch in parts of Europe. The Zoe electric car faces a flood of new competitors.

Mr. Senard, who is also chairman of the alliance, called the recent performance at both Renault and Nissan “miserable” and “disgraceful.”


“This cannot go on and everybody understands that,” he said. Mr. Senard said the ousting of some troublemakers calmed tensions and would allow the alliance to fix its problems.

As a group, Renault, Nissan and third partner Mitsubishi Motors Corp. sell more cars than General Motors Co. and are roughly on a par with global leaders Volkswagen AG and Toyota Motor Corp. But size doesn’t mean much in the absence of further cooperation, Mr. Senard said.

“At the end of the day you’re lagging in terms of performance. You’re the worst in terms of the big four,” he said.

Mitsubishi joined the alliance in 2016 after Nissan bought a 34% controlling stake. The deal was praised within the alliance for the added scale a third partner brought, but Mitsubishi currently has few ties to Renault.

When Mr. Saikawa, the Nissan CEO at the time, in July announced a global restructuring that includes 12,500 job cuts, it didn’t include a discussion of the alliance.

This year, the companies ended Mr. Ghosn’s annual tradition of announcing how many billions of dollars were saved through what the companies call synergies. They were concerned it would look foolish when profits at both were plummeting. “I’d rather say nothing than say things I can’t justify,” Mr. Senard said.

People at both companies said they are tired of fighting. Some top executives have jumped ship to take jobs at major competitors. At Nissan, a new triumvirate at the top headed by Chief Executive Makoto Uchida took over on Dec. 1. One of the executives, Jun Seki, resigned weeks into his new job.

“The alliance is essential to our performance recovery and steadfast growth in the future,” Mr. Uchida said on his second day on the job.

When the heads of Nissan, Renault and Mitsubishi met in France in late November, they discussed pooling resources on research, engines and shared factories as well as a joint venture to develop future technologies, said people familiar with the discussions. The three have appointed an alliance general secretary, and they plan further personnel moves in coming weeks. Renault is looking for a new CEO, to succeed Mr. Bolloré, who was fired in October.

Seeing the endless squabbling is galling to Mr. Ghosn, who is living in a Tokyo house awaiting a trial set to start next year, according to a former alliance executive familiar with his views. “There is a point where the Japanese will say, ‘By the way, guys, why are we together?’ ”

They've always been fighting- Carlos held it together. And without him share prices, sales and profits have plummeted. He was without a doubt a very capable CEO.

[flatbutt]

Is life in Lebanon better? Well maybe better than house arrest in Japan but that says more about Japan. However I know nothing other than what I read.

[flipper35]

Every time I see his picture I hear Chief Inspector Dryfus yell "Cousteau"

[Iciclehead]

I suspect all of the above is true....it take one mean SOB to keep a company together in tough times, couple that with the vastly different cultures and vastly different approaches it is likely a miracle that the thing hung together the way it did.

In my twilight years, while I have never been CEO, I have been in the C-suite long enough to realize that the Ghosn's of the world are necessary, one of the problems of that "type" is that they cannot grow a successor as anyone with bulldog tenacity required to hold it all together inevitably will clash with the CEO and eventually get ousted before they can succeed into the CEO position or they leave in frustration.

Steve Jobs had it right...as per below




Dennis

Originally Posted by Iciclehead

I suspect all of the above is true....it take one mean SOB to keep a company together in tough times, couple that with the vastly different cultures and vastly different approaches it is likely a miracle that the thing hung together the way it did.

In my twilight years, while I have never been CEO, I have been in the C-suite long enough to realize that the Ghosn's of the world are necessary, one of the problems of that "type" is that they cannot grow a successor as anyone with bulldog tenacity required to hold it all together inevitably will clash with the CEO and eventually get ousted before they can succeed into the CEO position or they leave in frustration.

Steve Jobs had it right...as per below




Dennis

My experience as well. I spent a few years in the C-suite myself, and the "good" CEOs--in terms of increasing shareholder value--were generally dicks. Unfortunately, America likes dicks and they tend to, uh, rise through the ranks.

I wonder why some here have to turn everything into a crusade against the evil MSM. Give it a rest, guys. Talk about the issues.

Originally Posted by flatbutt

Is life in Lebanon better? Well maybe better than house arrest in Japan but that says more about Japan. However I know nothing other than what I read.

No extradition, and he's a citizen. If you're gonna go to Lebanon, being rich helps.

[cairns]

No one crusaded against the MSM but they have failed to cover this story. Only business publications (and some automotive) have covered it up until now. Same deal with Theranos.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by flatbutt

Is life in Lebanon better? Well maybe better than house arrest in Japan but that says more about Japan. However I know nothing other than what I read.

If you're really rich and apparently, well liked in Lebanon, it probably is better.

[Captain Ahab Jr]

It gets better....

Being reported he escaped from house arrest when some paramilitaries entered his home posing as musicians hired to perform at a dinner party, they left with Ghosn hiding in a double base case

I don't think Lebanon would be bad place for him to spend the rest of his life, especially as he'll have family there and I'm sure plenty of cash too

[Geneman]

HARD to see how he could fit in that base case. but cool as hell if thats the way he pulled it off. but still likely required greasing many palms. and i would not discount some complicity with the jap govnt in an attempt to defuse the whole thing, keep the bail, and not have their pathetic "legal " system come under worldwide scrutiny and ridicule.... jmho.

Originally Posted by cairns

No one crusaded against the MSM but they have failed to cover this story. Only business publications (and some automotive) have covered it up until now. Same deal with Theranos.

I got a breaking news alert from the NYT.