Carlos Ghosn

Carlos Ghosn (كارلوس غصن;, born 9 March 1954) is a businessman and former automotive executive, widely known for having dramatically fled house arrest in 2019 in Japan, while awaiting trial on financial impropriety charges related to his tenure at Nissan.

Ghosn served as CEO of Michelin North America, chairman and CEO of Renault, chairman of AvtoVAZ, chairman and CEO of Nissan, and chairman of Mitsubishi Motors.

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 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.

Jorge was convicted of murdering a priest in Sawfar, Lebanon in 1960.

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.

Jorge fled to Brazil in 1975 at the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War.

After graduation in 1978, Ghosn spent 18 years at Michelin, Europe's largest tire 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.

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.

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.

Carlos' father, Jorge Ghosn (died 2006) was a diamond trader and worked in the airline industry.