According to Reuters on June 25, Carlos Ghosn, former CEO of Nissan, stated that recent calls from some shareholders for his return reflect deep-seated anger among investors over Nissan's prolonged underperformance in recent years.

Ghosn also emphasized that without significant changes, Nissan is likely to become a subsidiary of a larger Chinese enterprise. He argued that Nissan’s current situation offers even less hope than it did before Renault’s rescue in 1999, and only he himself currently has the capacity to save the company.

These remarks can be seen as a stern critique by a former leader on Nissan’s current state, while also subtly reflecting strategic considerations in reshaping his own historical legacy.

Carlos Ghosn (Former CEO of Nissan)

Born March 1954 in Brazil, of Lebanese descent; holds dual citizenship in Brazil, Lebanon, and France; a legendary yet controversial figure in the global automotive industry.

Ghosn pointed out that shareholder calls for his return essentially represent a concentrated emotional outburst from the market regarding Nissan’s eight-year operational decline. Since Ghosn’s departure in 2018, three successive CEOs have failed to reverse the downward trend, resulting in an 80% drop in the company’s stock price and a halving of annual sales—from a 5 million unit level down to around 3 million units. Faced with increasingly fierce competition, Nissan has been slow in decision-making and excessively conservative in strategy, even resorting to extreme cost-cutting measures such as closing seven factories and laying off 20,000 employees. Some shareholders nostalgically recall the era of high stock prices and strong leadership under Ghosn, attempting through these extreme proposals to express dissatisfaction and anxiety toward the current management.

Although Ghosn claims he is “the only person capable of saving Nissan today,” this statement is more rooted in emotional nostalgia than in practical feasibility:

In 2018, Ghosn was arrested in Japan on allegations of financial misconduct. Later, in late 2019, he orchestrated the globally sensational “cello case escape” to flee to Lebanon. He remains a wanted fugitive across multiple countries, and due to the absence of an extradition treaty between Lebanon and Japan, he will never be able to legally return to Japan to resume duties.

The circumstances surrounding Ghosn’s ouster were already entangled with power struggles between Renault and Nissan over equity and alliance control. Today, the cooperation model and ownership structure between the two companies have been fundamentally restructured—there is no longer any foundation for the centralized management style Ghosn once wielded. Moreover, his aggressive management approach severely clashes with the current governance culture within Japanese enterprises.

By comparing Nissan’s current crisis to the one it faced before Renault’s rescue in 1999, Ghosn claimed there is “less hope” now. This indeed reflects Nissan’s structural challenges: insufficient investment in electrification, outdated product lines, and the loss of a crucial external synergy opportunity after the failed merger talks with Honda. However, the automotive industry has undergone profound transformations since Ghosn’s era. Nissan’s current predicament stems from multiple overlapping issues and cannot be quickly resolved simply by replacing a single manager.

In summary, Ghosn’s public statements serve both as a fierce indictment of Nissan’s current state and as a strategic attempt to reaffirm his personal value. For Nissan to truly overcome the crisis of potentially becoming someone else’s subordinate, rather than indulging in unrealistic “nostalgic salvation,” it should confront its shortcomings in electric vehicle transformation and global competitiveness head-on, and steadily implement realistic and feasible recovery plans.

Original article: toutiao.com/article/1869062419441664/

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author.