The brutal Carlos fall of Ghosn
From parties in Versailles to a Tokyo jail. How Nissan boss was humbled in...
His is one of the most spectacular descents since icarus. Until this week, Carlos Ghosn was the undisputed titan of the motor industry at the head of not one but three international car giants, Japan’s Nissan and Mitsubishi along with Renault of France.
Now, his stellar 40-year career is in shreds after he was arrested in Japan on accusations of financial misconduct.
To the surprise of no-one, he was ousted yesterday as chairman of Nissan. His supporters suggest Ghosn is the victim of a hatchet job at the hands of executives who thought him overmighty and opposed plans to merge the Japanese company with Renault.
Questions are being asked as to whether it is credible that he could have misused corporate assets so blatantly without anyone knowing.
Whatever the truth, there will be no shortage of schadenfreude at his downfall. The 64-year-old is the personification of Davos Man, a member of the global elite who infest the swiss ski resort for the annual World Economic Forum.
He was idolised for having brought Nissan back from the brink, nicknamed ‘le cost-cutter’ for his efficiency and ‘Mr 7/11’ for his appetite for work. He even featured in Manga comic books.
But this led him to behave more like an emperor than a manager. For Ghosn is typical of the ‘gold collar workers’ – the cadre of top bosses who have multi-million pound pay packages, coutureclad second wives and private jets. He occupies a different universe to the 6,700 decidedly blue collar workers at his Nissan factory in sunderland, where they push out half a million cars every year.
His fall raises doubts over the future of a plant which supports another 27,000 workers in the supply chain – coveted jobs in a region which has struggled with higher than average unemployment.
But it has a broader significance: he embodies the rootless, ultra-privileged masters of the universe whose amoral behaviour has created a crisis of confidence in capitalism. since the financial crisis, voters have seen finances squeezed and jobs vanish, leaving them disillusioned with established politics: in sunderland, they voted overwhelmingly for Brexit.
The mogul was born in Lebanon, brought up in Brazil and educated in Paris. Home is a penthouse with views across Tokyo. But, his accusers say, he also made use of homes in Brazil, Paris, Amsterdam and Beirut at the company’s expense. Ghosn is of course innocent until proven otherwise, but his predicament is a serious blow.
This is a man far more at home in the corridors of power than the spartan surroundings of the Tokyo Detention Centre.
Famously, he met Theresa May shortly after the Brexit referendum in 2016, obtaining assurances from the Prime Minister regarding the sunderland plant. Many businessmen would have been overawed at meeting the PM but blasé Ghosn gave the impression the honour was all Mrs May’s. ‘i had the impression i know this office by heart. Because i was there before to see David Cameron, Gordon Brown, there are five prime ministers i met in the same office,’ he said.
He was well-acquainted with Tony Blair, whose County Durham constituency is close to the Nissan works. The ties have persisted, as Cherie Blair, the former PM’s wife, is a director of Renault.
Ghosn began his career at tyre maker Michelin in 1978, moved to Renault in 1996, and was sent three years later by that company to troubleshoot at Nissan.
His success made him a semi godlike figure. An acid-tinged profile in a business magazine told how he would fly into top end hotels by helicopter, arriving at the Peninsula Bangkok hotel using a lounge on the 37th floor reserved for aerial check-ins.
Generations of aspiring executives lapped up his every word, including bland essays he penned last year, entitled ‘My Personal History’, where he gushed about his children, Caroline, Nadine, Maya and Anthony, but did not mention their mother Rita, to whom he was married for more than two decades.
in a Facebook post on Monday that was taken down, she said that ‘narcissists’ pretend to have morals and values ‘that they really don’t possess’, adding: ‘Behind closed doors they lie, insult, criticise, disrespect and abuse.’
The party he threw in 2016 for his wedding to his willowy second wife Carole can be seen as a warning. The do, at Versailles, was inspired by sofia Coppola film Marie Antoinette and featured actors in 18th-century costume
(pictured above). Carole said: ‘We wanted it to feel as if we were inviting guests into our home, nothing too studied.’
One of Ghosn’s hobbies is reading about the Roman Empire. soon, he may have more time to reflect on his own rise and fall.