Carlos Ghosn isn’t exactly fading away. He was famously smuggled out of Japan in 2019 after he was arrested on charges of financially mismanaging the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance he had wrestled into unlikely existence, and since then Ghosn has been holed up in Lebanon, avoiding extradition. He has admitted exactly zero guilt, blaming his arrest on Nissan’s nasty corporate politics. He also isn’t keeping his mouth shut about the car business.
The terminally ill Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance hasn’t officially died, but Ghosn clearly thinks it’s a goner. Predictably, he’s taking his postmortem revenge by ripping into Nissan for its failures while offering some hope for Renault’s recovery. France’s Le Fiagro recently reported on his views, which are scathing. Meanwhile, Nissan is doing everything in its power to prove him right. Its new CEO, Ivan Espinosa, has presided over the departures of both his former boss, Makoto Uchida, and Renault Chairman Jean-Dominique Senard from the Nissan board, according to Automotive News. At this point, the alliance is all but history.
Nissan is in serious trouble
That might actually be a good thing, as Nissan is now in a world of hurt right all by itself, desperate for a rescue plan. After a merger with Honda collapsed earlier this year, the company plunged into a draconian restructuring that involves closing factories, laying off employees, and potentially even selling its headquarters in Japan. It urgently needed the Honda tie-up to happen, even if Ghosn derided it as “begging;” failure means that Nissan has to find another suitor, and Ghosn named iPhone-maker Foxconn as a possibility, Le Figaro reported.
The original Renault-Nissan alliance wasn’t supposed to succeed, but it did. Ghosn is not without considerable flaws, but he was among the last of the empire-builders in the auto industry, and he brought the alliance to the point where it could challenge Volkswagen and Toyota globally. His master plan was to fully combine Nissan, Renault, and Mitsubishi into a gigantic holding company, but he misjudged Nissan’s cooperation and underestimated Japan’s hostility to the French side of the alliance.
Renault has a chance to bounce back
With Nissan effectively ending the alliance, Renault is free to reinvent itself, and Ghosn believes that should involve China. Departing CEO Luca de Meo has put Renault in an ideal position to combine forces with a Chinese juggernaut such as Geely, opines Bloomberg’s Chris Bryant. A merger with Volvo isn’t out of the question. If Renault took the plunge, it would have access to global scale in a major market and solve its problem of being a limited European player.
Renault has been here before: as Bryant notes, Renault attempted to merge with FCA in 2018, but FCA absorbed Peugeot instead, creating Stellantis. Renault might have dodged a bullet, however, as Stellantis is currently struggling to chart a path forward after the exit of its CEO — and Ghosn disciple — Carlos Tavares.
Consolidation is probably the only solution for all these automakers – their best shot at navigating a costly transition from the age of combustion to the age of electrification. There’s just one major problem: Nissan and Renault’s struggles show that alliances and mergers in the industry are incredibly difficult to pull off. And to make matters worse, the ambitious empire-builders, like Ghosn and Tavares, are being pushed offstage. The best hope for all these companies might be for a new Carlos Ghosn to emerge — in China. Say hello to Geely’s Li Shufu!
