The board of directors of Nissan Motors ousted detained Chairman Carlos Ghosn on Thursday through a unanimous vote. The board also removed Greg Kelly from his post as representative director.

Ghosn, who was arrested for alleged financial misconduct, was removed despite Renault urging Nissan’s board to delay the move because this will usher in a period of uncertainty for the 19-year-old alliance with Renault.

This move now leaves the chairman position vacant and has rattled the Franco-Japanese alliance since the arrest of the 64-year-old Ghosn in Japan on Monday.

Ghosn had shaped the alliance, which was enlarged in 2016 to include Japan’s Mitsubishi Motors (7211.T, and was pushing for a deeper tie-up, including potentially a full Renault-Nissan merger at the French government’s urging, despite strong reservations at the Japanese firm. Nissan executives have five seats on the nine-member board, Renault loyalists have two seats, and the remaining two are held by unaffiliated outside directors, a former bureaucrat and a race driver.

Japanese prosecutors said Ghosn and Kelly conspired to understate Ghosn’s compensation at Nissan over five years from 2010, saying it was about half the actual 10 billion yen ($88 million).

Deputy public prosecutor at the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office, Shin Kukimoto, said on Thursday that court approval was received a day earlier to detain Ghosn for 10 days but he could not comment on whether he had admitted to the allegations.

With Ghosn and Kelly still in detention, neither of the men were able to vote or defend themselves at the meeting.

Renault has refrained from firing Ghosn as chairman and CEO; but Mitsubishi Motors plans to remove Ghosn from his post of chairman at a board meeting next week.

Amid growing uncertainty over the future of the alliance, Japan’s industry minister and France’s finance minister are due to meet in Paris on Thursday to seek ways to stabilize it.

A senior Nissan official on Wednesday said, “for me, the future of the alliance is the bigger deal,” when asked about Ghosn’s arrest by reporters. “It’s obvious that in this age, we need to do things together. To part would be impossible,” he added.

Nissan said on Monday that an internal investigation triggered by a tip-off from an informant had revealed that Ghosn engaged in wrongdoing including personal use of company money and under-reporting of his earnings for years.

Ghosn and Kelly have not commented on the accusations.




https://businessvillage.com.ng/ghosn-detained-nissan-chairman-sacked/

Why would Ghosn be treated this way? This is a man who brought Renault from near-extinction to profitability in a few short years.