Macron can’t escape blame for Ghosn fiasco
It has as much to do about two contrasting corporate cultures as anything else
Making cars is an intensely political business, one that brings good local jobs and global prestige. This applies to France as much as anywhere else; the country places the same importance on its carmakers as it does on playing host to Airbus.
But today its approach to industrial capitalism is facing its biggest test after the shocking arrest in Japan of Carlos Ghosn, head of the Renault-NissanMitsubishi Alliance.
The way in which the driving force of the Franco-Japanese tieup was carted off to prison, and told he would be fired by Nissan’s CEO Hiroto Saikawa, went beyond mere legal and corporate procedure and squarely into the political realm, in the view of Paris. Renault owns a 43 per cent stake in Nissan and, for the French, their country’s interests are at stake.
But if this is a palace coup by the Japanese executives at Nissan, France and its president Emmanuel Macron are hardly blameless. Ghosn himself has regularly tussled with his government about the need to reduce the French state’s 15 per cent stake in Renault for deeper ties with the Japanese.
And it’s true that the alliance has started to seem lopsided. While Renault owns that 43 per cent of Nissan, Nissan holds only 15 per cent of Renault and yet contributes most of the alliance profits. Reports that Ghosn had started work this year on a full merger of the two companies won’t have helped.
It may well have been a catalyst for last week’s events.
Macron’s administration could do a few things to repair relations. An acknowledgement that the alliance can’t depend on one man would be a start. Also, there needs to be an accord on making sure the stakes held by both sides are fair.
France is desperate to protect its approach to international partnerships. It knows that Renault would be too small to survive alone, and would either fall prey to a foreign buyer or a domestic merger with Peugeot, which would inevitably involve thousands of job losses.
A full Nissan merger will clearly not happen now. To make sure the alliance doesn’t wither on the vine, France needs to help bridge the trust gap.