Articles are from public numbers : Cars Sankei (ID: autoreport) , Author: LIANG Qiu dreams <. / span>
In the popular movie “Marriage Story”, which won six Oscar nominations this year, there is such a sentence-“Criminal lawyers see the best side of a bad person, but divorce lawyers see the best one Side. “
As depicted in this sentence, the protagonist and husband and wife who originally planned to break up peacefully in the movie, with the encouragement of a divorce lawyer, gradually broke their faces, and even created many guilts for each other.
I turned my attention to this relationship between Ghosn and Nissan. Although we ca n’t tell which side is good and which side is bad, but With the repeated fermentation of the event, this more subtle confrontation pattern, It is just like a divorced couple: they constantly excavate and supplement each other’s faults, and demand more compensation.
Last week, Nissan once again filed a civil lawsuit against former chairman Ghosn, asking him to compensate about 10 billion yen for years of misconduct and fraud. (US $ 91 million) , the compensation stemmed from Ghosn’s use of unpaid rent in overseas homes, private use of company aircraft, payment to his sister and personal lawyer in Lebanon, and investigation with Costs, legal and regulatory costs.
Nissan said the amount could increase and said it would also try to file another lawsuit against Ghosn’s “baseless defamatory remarks” to reporters in Lebanon. The Bloomberg Billionaires Index estimates the former auto executive’s wealth is about $ 70 million. Nissan seeks damages that, if successfully recovered, could mean that Ghosn will be in debt of more than $ 20 million.
On the other hand, last week also happened to be the first public hearing of Ghosn’s case against Nissan Mitsubishi. In court defense, Ghosn’s lawyers accused Nissan and Mitsubishi of “improper dismissal” and asked to publish the internal documents of the joint venture to find out why Ghosn was fired before being arrested for financial misconduct. At the same time, Ghosn demanded € 15 million in compensation for ($ 16,245,000) .
In short, both sides are right-minded and have their own opinions. It looks like this will be a protracted war.
One, the deeper the love, the harder it is torn
Since Ghosn’s arrest, Nissan’s market value has fallen by more than $ 10 billion, and the market value is already lower than Subaru. At the company’s operational level, Nissan also ushered in its first quarterly loss in nearly 10 years. (October-December) in the third quarter of Nissan’s fiscal year 2019 showed that its third-quarter operating profit was 23 billion yen, lower than the analysis Division ’s average estimate of 59 billion yen; sales fell 18% to 2.5 trillion yen, with a net loss of 26.1 billion yen (approximately $ 238 million) ) . Earlier, Nissan also announced that it would reduce 12,500 jobs worldwide.
But even so, the Japanese side still poses a “blood war” with Ghosn. It is understood that Nissan’s investigation of Ghosn and its former executive Kelly (Greg Kelly) has been used in lawyers, investigators and digital forensics. It cost more than $ 200 million. New documents submitted by Nissan to the Tokyo Stock Exchange alone, Nissan spent nearly 10,000 hours inside financial analysis, reviewed nearly 245,000 documents, and surveyed more than 70 people.
According to a person familiar with the matter, Nissan has hired private detectives in the Middle East and they have been working for months to unearth unfavorable material about Ghosn. In addition, Nissan will target a pink villa in Beirut, Lebanon, where Ghos lives, because it was purchased by Nissan for $ 8.75 million and has been refurbished and furnished. Nissan considers Ghosn to continue using the house illegal and will use legal means to expel him.
Ghosn’s residence in Beirut
The Japanese government is also staring at Ghosn.
After Ghosn fled, the Japanese government immediately issued an application to the International Criminal Police Organization, which immediately issued a red warrant to the Ghosn couples. Although the Lebanese authorities later only summoned Ghosn to question and issue a tourist ban to Ghosn, the Japanese government obviously would not give up. Last week, the Japanese Minister of Justice Moriko once again spoke out in response to the Ghosn incident and vowed never to abandon the extradition of Ghosn.
Mr. Masako Mori, Minister of Justice of Japan
On the other side, Ghosn, remembering the life of “man-made sword and stabbed me as fish” for more than a year, the hatred in his heart is not enough to be outsider. After returning to Lebanon, with the support of family forces, Ghosn began to “fireAll-on “counterattack.
It first detailedly accused Nissan of “all kinds of slanderous crimes” at its first press conference after fleeing Tokyo, and pointed to the fact that Renault-Nissan Mitsubishi Alliance has no future because it has no more profits and no more Business grows, no more strategic plans, no more technology.
In fact, while in Japan, Ghosn told his defense lawyers that Nissan could go bankrupt in two to three years. In an interview with the media, Ghosn also said that compared with the Japanese judicial system, he is more satisfied with the judicial system in Lebanon and will cooperate fully with the investigation. Regarding Moriya’s statement-“Ghosn tried to justify absconding by criticizing Japan’s judicial system”, Ghosn said Moriya’s remarks were extremely ridiculous.
While busy with the lawsuit, Ghosn also hired Michael Ovez, the founder of American Creative Artists Agency and former president of Disney, as his agent. According to Japanese media reports, he hosted a Hollywood producer at his Tokyo residence in December 2019. The producer was named John Leisher, the producer of the 2014 Oscar-winning film “Birdman”. Quite high industry influence. Ghosn seems to be trying to put his personal experience on the screen and let more people know about his “innocent” through the form of movies.
Although Ghosn’s spokesperson said that the two parties are currently evaluating the plan, it can be expected that if the film is put on the big screen, it will definitely cause damage to the Japanese legal system and Nissan’s commercial image hurt.
Second, who remembers the sweetness once?
To this day, it is difficult for both sides to remember how they were able to complete each other.
In 1999, that was the first year Ghosn met Nissan. At that time, Nissan’s “Performance Vehicle Strategy” suffered a double blow from the sharp increase in oil prices and the frequent occurrence of traffic accidents. It had been losing money for 7 consecutive years, and its debt had exceeded 2 trillion yen.Seeing to die.
Nissan has proposed the “901 plan”, that is, to build the world’s first car in the 1990s.
Nissan filed for bankruptcy, and many parties sought help, but at that time Japan had no extra money to help it fill such a large hole. In desperation, Nissan had to start “selling its body.” It looked for Ford, but Ford just bought Mazda’s shares and had no money; later it looked for Daimler Chrysler, but the two sides couldn’t see each other, and eventually they didn’t talk.
At this time, the “Savior” appeared, and he was Ghosn.
At that time, Ghosn had just released Renault from the nature of state-owned enterprises. Renault can be said to have a chance to flex his muscles. But in terms of scale and fame, Nissan is far superior to Renault. Snake swallow elephant, is it feasible? Fortunately, Ghosn finally faced pressure from many parties, invested more than 5 billion US dollars, and won 36.8% of Nissan’s equity.
At Nissan, Ghosn ’s bold measures broke almost all taboos in Japan—closed five factories, cut 21,000 jobs, and cut off the “Economic Association” that supports Japan ’s post-war economic growth. = “text-remarks” label = “Remarks”> (keiretsu) system. The system is a complex network that connects banks, manufacturers, suppliers, issuers and the Japanese government. Although it has cut off countless human feelings, in an instant, by 2001, Nissan had a profit of 2.7 billion US dollars. 15 years later, Ghosn took out another 200 billion yen to buy a 34% stake in Mitsubishi. At this point, Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi, the world’s largest automotive alliance, was born.
In fiscal 2017, Nissan’s total global sales reached 5.77 million units, accounting for more than 50% of the entire alliance, and net income reached 746.9 billion yen.
I fulfilled you, and you fulfilled me. Nissan’s 17-year-old scenery is unlimited and can be called Ghosn’s most proud article. He proudly wrote in his autobiography: I think that my life experience to this day is all about preparing for Nissan’s career. The Emperor of Japan awarded him the famous Blue Badge. In a survey by the Japanese media, he became one of the most wanted Japanese women to give him monkeys.
However, at the same time, Ghosn is becoming more and more like an old husband who has been around for a long time and all his weaknesses are exposed. Among them, the biggest disadvantage of is extravagance. He attended various dinners of politicians and celebrities, held press conferences, published books, and in order to show his love to his wife, he also chose the wedding venue to Versailles. He paid himself an annual salary of nearly 1 billion yen, almost 11 times the chairman of Toyota.
The Japanese have a strong resistance to the income gap. The average level of CEO compensation in Japan is significantly lower than overseas.
Facing the arrogant Ghosn, the Japanese believe that maintaining the relationship will be a painful and paradoxical cycle. This also makes this relationship between Ghosn and Nissan more and more like a surviving marriage-not without you, not with you .
That’s why the airport was arresting people. At a press conference in Lebanon, Ghosn revealed that he was in discussions before his arrestMerger with Fiat Chrysler (FCA) , although FCA has reached an alliance with PSA at this time. But without this lawsuit, the world’s automotive landscape may have a different world. After one year, such a “reexamination” was carried out, and there was only one sigh left.
Three, finally talk
Perhaps, from the beginning, the alliance between Nissan and Renault that Ghosn promoted was doomed to last.
The Renault Group holds a 43% stake in Nissan, while Nissan only holds a 15% stake in Renault and has no voting rights. Nissan struggled and made money, but in the end Renault had the final say.
The imbalance of power is destined to cause various disputes within the . Of course, perhaps through these two years of competition, the alliance has a chance to reach a better balance.
Foreign media have revealed that Nissan is working on a proposal in preparation for another effort to push Renault to reduce its stake. Reducing the shares held by the two parties in the other party may help to balance the relationship between the two parties, make them more focused on new technologies, and achieve the effect of strengthening alliance relations. Although, all this has nothing to do with Ghosn.
More importantly for Ghosn, Japan has made little progress so far in its efforts to repatriate him from Lebanon because Lebanon and Japan have no extradition treaty. In the future, with Japan’s current international political influence, it is estimated that it will be difficult to make further progress.
The article is from the public number: Cars Sankei (ID: autoreport) , author: LIANG Qiu dream.