Background and career
Carlos Ghosn (; French: [kaʁlɔs ɡon]; Arabic: كارلوس غصن, romanized: Kārlūs Ḡuṣn; Lebanese Arabic pronunciation: ['kaːrlos 'ɣosˤn], born 9 March 1954) is a businessman and former automotive executive. He was the chief executive officer (CEO) of Michelin North America, chairman and CEO of Renault, chairman of AvtoVAZ, chairman and CEO of Nissan, and chairman of Mitsubishi Motors. Ghosn began his professional career in 1978 at Michelin, Europe's largest tire manufacturer. Over the course of 18 years at the company, he held a variety of leadership roles, including overseeing operations in South America. In 1999, following Renault's acquisition of a major stake in the struggling Japanese automaker Nissan, Ghosn moved to Japan to oversee its recovery. As chief operating officer, and later chief executive officer, he implemented a series of restructuring measures aimed at improving Nissan's financial performance. Under his leadership, Nissan returned to profitability and strengthened its position in the global market. In 2005, Ghosn also became CEO of Renault, holding top executive roles at both companies simultaneously. In 2016, he additionally became chairman of Mitsubishi Motors after Nissan acquired a controlling interest in the company, further expanding his influence in the automotive sector. In 2018, he was arrested in Japan on suspicion of financial misconduct at Nissan, having been accused of understating his annual salary and misusing company funds. In 2019, while under house arrest awaiting trial, he escaped from Japan by concealing himself inside a large box, which was shipped as freight on a private jet.
Ghosn's grandfather was Bichara Ghosn, a Maronite Catholic who emigrated from Ajaltoun, French Mandate Lebanon to Brazil at the age of 13, eventually settling in remote Guaporé, Rondônia, near the border between Brazil and Bolivia. Bichara Ghosn was an entrepreneur and eventually headed several companies, in businesses including the rubber trade, the sale and purchase of agricultural products, and aviation. His son Jorge Ghosn married Rose Jazzar, a Nigerian-born Lebanese woman whose family came from Miziara in Lebanon then went to Brazil, where they settled in Porto Velho, the state capital of Rondônia, and had four children. Carlos' father, Jorge Ghosn (died 2006) was a diamond trader and worked in the airline industry. Jorge was convicted of murdering a priest in Sawfar, Lebanon in 1960. Jorge fled to Brazil in 1975 at the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War. Carlos Ghosn was born on 9 March 1954, in Porto Velho. When he was about two years old he became sick after drinking unsanitary water, and his mother moved with him to Rio de Janeiro. He did not fully recover there, and in 1960, when Ghosn was six years old, he and his mother and sister moved to Beirut, Lebanon, where his grandmother and two other sisters lived. Ghosn completed his secondary school studies in Lebanon, at the Jesuit school Collège Notre-Dame de Jamhour. He then completed his classes préparatoires in Paris, at the Collège Stanislas and the Lycée Saint-Louis. He graduated as an engineer from the École Polytechnique in 1974 and the École des Mines de Paris in 1978.
After graduation in 1978, Ghosn spent 18 years at Michelin, Europe's largest tyre maker, initially training and working in several plants in France and Germany. In 1981, he became plant manager in Le Puy-en-Velay, France. In 1984 he was named head of research and development for the company's industrial tyre division. In 1985, when Ghosn was 30 years old, he was appointed chief operating officer (COO) of Michelin's South American operations. He returned to Rio de Janeiro, reporting directly to François Michelin, who tasked Ghosn with turning around the operation, which was unprofitable and struggling under Brazil's hyperinflation. Ghosn formed cross-functional management teams to determine best practices among the French, Brazilian, and other nationalities working in the South American division. The multicultural experience in Brazil formed the basis of his cross-cultural management style and emphasis on diversity as a core business asset. "You learn from diversity ... but you're comforted by commonality", Ghosn has said. The division returned to profitability in two years. After turning around Michelin's South American operations, Ghosn was appointed president and COO of Michelin North America in 1989, and moved to Greenville, South Carolina, with his family. He was promoted to CEO of Michelin North America in 1990. He presided over the restructuring of the company after its acquisition of the Uniroyal Goodrich Tyre Company.
In 1996, Ghosn became executive vice president in charge of purchasing, advanced research, engineering and development, powertrain operations, and manufacturing at Renault; and he was also in charge of Renault's South American division, located in the Mercosur. Ghosn's radical restructuring of Renault successfully contributed to profitability of the company over 1997. His reputation of successful performance under François Michelin was repeated under the first CEO of the freshly privatized Renault.
In March 1999, Renault and Nissan formed the Renault–Nissan Alliance, and in May 1999 Renault purchased a 36.8% stake in Nissan. While maintaining his roles at Renault, Ghosn joined Nissan as its chief operating officer (COO) in June 1999, became its president in June 2000, and was named chief executive officer (CEO) in June 2001. When he joined the company, Nissan had a consolidated interest-bearing net automotive debt of more than $20 billion (more than 2 trillion yen), and only three of its 46 models sold in Japan were generating a profit. Reversing the company's sinking fortunes was considered nearly impossible. Ghosn's "Nissan Revival Plan", announced in October 1999, called for a return to profitability in fiscal year 2000, a profit margin in excess of 4.5% of sales by the end of fiscal year 2002, and a 50% reduction in the current level of debt by the end of fiscal year 2002. Ghosn promised to resign if these goals were not met. Ghosn's Nissan Revival Plan called for cutting 21,000 Nissan jobs (14% of total workforce), mostly in Japan; shutting five Japanese plants; reducing the number of suppliers and shareholdings; and auctioning off prized assets such as Nissan's aerospace unit. Ghosn was the fourth non-Japanese person to lead a Japanese automaker, after Mark Fields, Henry Wallace and James Miller were appointed by Ford to run Mazda in the late 1990s. In addition to cutting jobs, plants, and suppliers, Ghosn spearheaded major and dramatic structural and corporate-culture changes at Nissan. He defied Japanese business etiquette in various ways, including by eliminating seniority-based and age-based promotion, by changing lifetime employment from a guarantee to a desired goal for when the company achieved high performance, and by dismantling Nissan's keiretsu system; an interwoven web of parts suppliers with cross-holdings in Nissan. When the Nissan Revival Plan was announced, the proposed dismantling of keiretsu earned Ghosn the nickname "keiretsu killer", and The Wall Street Journal quoted a Dresdner Kleinwort Benson analyst in Tokyo as saying Ghosn might become a "target of public outrage" if Nissan threw former affiliates out of its supply chain. Ghosn changed Nissan's official company language from Japanese to English, and included executives from Europe and North America in key global strategy sessions for the first time. In the first year of the Nissan Revival Plan, Nissan's consolidated net profit after tax climbed to $2.7 billion for fiscal year 2000, from a consolidated net loss of $6.46 billion in the previous year. Twelve months into his three-year turnaround plan, Nissan had returned to profitability, and within three years it was one of the industry's most profitable auto makers, with operating margins consistently above 9%; more than twice the industry average. The goals of the Nissan Revival Plan were all reached before 31 March 2002. In May 2002, Ghosn announced his next set of goals for the company, "Nissan 180", a three-year plan for growth based on the numbers 1, 8, and 0: By the end of September 2005, Nissan planned to increase its global sales by one million vehicles; and by the spring of 2005, it was committed to achieving an operating margin of at least 8% and reducing its net automotive debt to zero. These goals were all reached: In the spring of 2003, Nissan announced that its net automotive debt was eliminated in fiscal year 2002. Nissan's operating profit margin climbed to 11.1% in fiscal year 2003; it had been 1.4% in fiscal year 1999. In October 2005, Nissan announced that its annual sales from 30 September 2004, to 30 September 2005, were more than 3.67 million, up from the 2.6 million vehicles sold in the fiscal year ended March 2002.
In May 2005, Ghosn was named president and chief executive officer of Renault. When he assumed the CEO roles at both Renault and Nissan, Ghosn became the world's first person to simultaneously run two companies on the Fortune Global 500. In 2005, billionaire investor Kirk Kerkorian acquired a 9.9% stake in General Motors (GM), seated one of his representatives on the company's board, and then urged GM to initiate a merger with Renault and Nissan, with Ghosn serving as the new chairman of GM. In 2006, GM's embattled management rebuffed the takeover attempt, and by the end of the year, Kerkorian's Tracinda Corp. sold most of its GM stock. In 2006, Ford Motor Co. made Ghosn a formal offer to lead the company. Ghosn refused, reportedly saying the only way he would come to the struggling company was if he was named both the CEO and chairman of the board. Bill Ford Jr. refused to give up his chairmanship.
