Carlos Ghosn made a name for himself as ‘Le Cost Killer’
(JOEL SAGET)
<p>Tokyo (AFP) – Former auto tycoon Carlos Ghosn, once-revered boss of three huge car companies, has masterminded an exit from Japan as stunning as his arrest that shocked the world more than a year ago.</p><p>The 65-year-old’s journey from one of the world’s best-known CEOs to a Japanese detention cell on financial misconduct charges was one of the most precipitous downfalls in corporate history.</p><p>And the man who once caught the media off guard by strolling out of his detention cell disguised as a workman has wrong-footed everyone again by leaving Japan for Lebanon, where he first arrived as a toddler.</p><p>Ghosn’s life was turned upside down on November 19, 2018 when Japanese prosecutors stormed his aircraft brandishing multiple accusations of financial crimes, and whisked him off to the Tokyo detention centre.</p><p>He languished there for more than 100 days until he was granted bail of nearly nine million dollars. In that time he lost his business empire: sacked from Japanese car giants Nissan and Mitsubishi Motors, he resigned from French manufacturer Renault. </p><p>Ghosn has consistently denied all charges against him, complained he would not receive a fair trial and chafed at the bail conditions imposed on him — especially a ban on communicating with his wife.</p><p></p><p>- ‘Cost killer’ -</p><p></p><p>Totally at ease among the champagne receptions of the world’s elite at Davos and on the red carpet at the Cannes film festival, Ghosn came to epitomise globalisation.</p><p>A polyglot and holder of three passports, he wrote in an autobiography that "just as globalisation and identity describe Nissan, they also perfectly express my life".</p><p>Born Carlos Ghosn Bichara in Brazil on March 9, 1954 to Lebanese parents, he moved as a very young boy back to Lebanon where he was educated in a multicultural Jesuit school by teachers from France, Lebanon, Syria and Egypt.</p><p>He completed his education in France, where he gained citizenship, and lived for many years in the United States.</p><p>At the age of 24, he was recruited by tyre firm Michelin where he embarked on a brilliant career and earned his nickname as a "cost killer".</p><p>He moved to Renault in 1996, bringing a brutal early-rising work ethic to the French firm and again slashing costs wherever possible.</p><p>In 1999, he took a massive gamble on the struggling Nissan with a mandate to turn it around.</p><p>A self-confessed "inflexible" boss, he ordered a series of "sacrifices" — five factories closed, 20,000 jobs cut.</p><p>After a "honeymoon period when he was admired and seen as a hero", his authoritarian methods began to grate, according to employees.</p><p>Ghosn himself said he did everything he could to ingratiate himself with Nissan.</p><p>"For the general shareholders meeting, I had practised bowing at 30 and 60 degrees. But I was there for one reason: to fix the company."</p><p>Tensions mounted when he became head of Renault in 2005 and he added a third hat by becoming chairman of Mitsubishi Motors in 2017 — earning him millions of euros per year.</p><p>Lavish displays of wealth did not endear him to the Japanese, whose corporate bosses tend to be less well compensated than their western counterparts.</p><p>In 2016, he threw a huge party at the Palace of Versailles outside Paris, complete with actors dressed in period costume.</p><p>From the vast platters of fresh fruit at that reception to the rice-based diet at his detention centre, it was a head-spinning fall from grace.</p><p>In January, he gave AFP and a French newspaper his only foreign media interview during his detention, charging that refusal to grant him bail "would not be normal in any other democracy of the world".</p><p>Ghosn is convinced he is the victim of a "plot" by Nissan executives to oust him and strenuously denies the charges he faces of under-reporting his salary and seeking to transfer personal investment losses to company books.</p><p>"Is it a trap? Is it a plot? It’s obvious: it’s a story of betrayal," Ghosn said in his AFP interview.</p><p></p><p>- ‘Unplanned path’ -</p><p></p><p>Painted as a devoted family man, Ghosn said that not being able to speak to his family and missing his daughter’s birthday for the first time were the hardest parts of his detention.</p><p>He mused in 2017 that he planned to spend more time with his grand-daughters and pass on his wisdom to the corporate bosses of the future.</p><p>"I won’t settle in one place. I will travel all over the world. I cannot conceive of spending all my time in just one country," he said at the time.</p><p>He has faced adversity before — at the age of two, he accidentally drank some unboiled water and nearly died. He has talked of ups and downs in prison — and in life.</p><p>"Life has a way of following its own unplanned path," he once wrote.</p><p>But he could scarcely have imagined the route it would take over the past year.</p><p></p>

Disclaimer: Validity of the above story is for 7 Days from original date of publishing. Source: AFP.