Carlos Ghosn
Carlos Ghosn, born 9 March 1954 is a Brazilian-Lebanese businessman who is currently the Chairman and CEO of Yokohama, Japan-based Nissan and holds the same positions at Paris-based Renault, which together produce more than one in 10 cars worldwide.[1] Ghosn is also Chairman and CEO of the Renault-Nissan Alliance, the strategic partnership overseeing the two companies through a unique cross-shareholding agreement.
For orchestrating one of the decade's most aggressive downsizing campaigns and spearheading the turnaround of Nissan from near bankruptcy in the late 1990s, Ghosn earned the nicknames "le cost killer" and "Mr. Fix It."[2] After the Nissan financial turnaround, he achieved celebrity status[3] and ranks as one of the 50 most famous men in global business and politics.[4] In Japan, he is the superhero protagonist in a popular "manga" comic book series.[5] His polemical decision to spend $5 billion to develop the world's first mainstream electric car, the Nissan Leaf, is a subject of the 2011 documentary "Revenge of the Electric Car."
Personal life
Ghosn was born in Porto Velho, Brazil on 9 March 1954 to a French mother and Lebanese father. At age 6, he moved to Beirut, Lebanon, with his mother. He completed his secondary school studies there, in a Jesuit school (Collège Notre-Dame de Jamhour). Then he completed his classes préparatoires at Lycée Stanislas in Paris.[7] He graduated with engineering degrees from the École Polytechnique in 1978 (X1974) with the final year's specialisation at the École des Mines de Paris. He is a both a Brazilian and French citizen.[8] Ghosn is multilingual and speaks six languages (Arabic, Portuguese, Spanish, French, English and Japanese).[9]
He has attracted controversy for his candor[10] and for his demanding and sometimes confrontational style.[11] He has also drawn criticism for investing heavily in developing economies, including Brazil, Russia, Korea, India and in particular China, where Nissan is now the No. 1 Japanese carmaker.[12] (By contrast, more traditional automakers focus on wealthy markets such as North America and Western Europe, which are seen as less risky bets.[13]) His strategy for penetrating emerging markets includes selling cars with sticker prices under $3,000 and successfully commercializing affordable zero-emission vehicles: "If you're going to let developing countries have as many cars as they want -- and they're going to have as many cars as they want one way or another -- there is no absolutely alternative but to go for zero emissions. And the only zero-emissions vehicle available today is electric.... So we decided to go for it," he told the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business. Ghosn is married and has four children. Ghosn, whom Forbes Magazine called "the hardest-working man in the brutally competitive global car business,"[15] splits his time between Paris and Tokyo and logs roughly 150,000 miles in airplanes per year.[16] Japanese media also call him “Seven-Eleven” (“work very hard from early in the morning till late at night”).[17]
Ghosn is often hailed as a potential presidential candidate in Lebanon.[18] In a June 2011 survey by insurance company AXA, Ghosn was ranked seventh in a random poll asking Japanese people, "Which celebrity do you want to run Japan?" (Barack Obama was No. 9, and Japan's own prime minister Naoto Kan was No. 19.)[19] He has so far declined such overtures, saying he has "no political ambitions."[20]
Career
In 1981, Ghosn joined French automotive supplier Michelin as a plant manager in Le Puy, France. In 1984 he was named head of research and development for the company's industrial tire division. One year later, he became chief operating officer of Michelin's South American operations, based in Brazil. In 1990, he was named chairman and chief executive officer of Michelin North America, where he presided over the restructuring of the company after its acquisition of the Uniroyal Goodrich Tire Company. He held those positions until 1996, when Renault hired him as executive vice president responsible for advanced research, car engineering and development, car manufacturing, powertrain operations, purchasing and supervision of Renault activities in South America.[21]
In 1999, Renault purchased a 36.8 percent stake in Nissan.[22] While maintaining his roles at Renault, Ghosn joined Nissan as its chief operating officer in June 1999, became its president in June 2000 and was named chief executive officer in June 2001. When he joined the company, Nissan had debt of $20 billion and only three of its 48 models were generating a profit -- and reversing the company's sinking fortunes was considered "mission impossible.".[23] Ghosn promised to resign if the company did not reach profitability by the end of the year, and claimed that Nissan would have no net debt by 2005. He defied Japanese business etiquette, cut 21,000 Nissan jobs (or 14 percent of total workforce), shut the first of five domestic plants, and auctioned off prized assets such as Nissan's aerospace unit. His radical methods would make him a “target of public outrage,” according to the Wall Street Journal.[24] However, in one year, Nissan's net profit climbed to $2.7 billion from a loss of $6.1 billion in the previous year. Twelve months into his three-year turnaround plan, Ghosn had Nissan back in the black, and within three years it was one of the industry's most profitable auto makers, with operating margins consistently above 9% -- more than twice the industry average.[25]Nissan's operating profit (EBIT, or earnings before interest and taxes) margin increased from 1.38% in FY 2000 to 9.25% in FY 2006,[26]

During a factory visit on 17 May 2011, Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn pledged the complete rebuilding of the company's engine plant in Iwaki, Japan, which was badly damaged after the March 2011 earthquake.
Ghosn—the first non-Japanese person to lead a Japanese automaker[27] -- spearheaded major structural changes at Nissan, dramatically altering the corporate culture. Most notably, he ended Nissan's reliance on an interwoven web of parts suppliers with cross-holdings in Nissan—a Japanese operating model called "keiretsu."[28] The dismantling of keiretsu earned Ghosn the nickname "keiretsu killer."[29] He changed the official company language from Japanese to English and included executives from Europe and North America in key global strategy sessions for the first time.[30] For the forcefulness of his initiatives to change the culture at Nissan, Ghosn has been compared with General Douglas MacArthur (the chief of staff of the US Army who radically changed Japan's political and economic structure during the post-World War II occupation).[31]
In May 2005, Ghosn was named president and chief executive officer of Renault. When he assumed the CEO roles at both Renault and Nissan, Ghosn became the world's first person to run two companies on the Fortune Global 500 simultaneously.[32] However, he is not the first person to be CEO of two high-profile companies at once. Steve Jobs, who was CEO of Apple and Pixar simultaneously, was one of several technology entrepreneurs to be at the helm of two companies at the same time.[33] Sergio Marcchione, who is CEO of Italy's Fiat, took over the troubled American carmaker Chrysler in June 2009 and is heading the attempted turnaround of Detroit's smallest carmaker.[34]
In 2005, billionaire investor Kirk Kerkorian acquired a 9.9 percent stake in General Motors and seated one of his representatives on the company's board, then urged GM to investigate a merger with Renault and Nissan with Ghosn as the new chairman of GM. In 2006, GM's embattled management rebuffed the takeover attempt, and by the end of the year Kerkorian's Tracinda Corp. sold most of its GM stock. [35]
Recently he has become one of the most visible leaders in recovery efforts after the Japanese earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011, one of the worst natural disasters in modern history.[36] Ghosn was one of the first business executives to travel into Japan's radiation zone, and at his direction Nissan restored operations at its hard-hit Iwaki engine plant weeks ahead of expectations.[37] He has appeared frequently on TV Tokyo[38] to encourage rebuilding. Amidst speculation that automakers will shift production away from Japan,[39] Ghosn has remained committed to building at least 1 million of Nissan's cars and trucks in Japan annually.[40] Ghosn's ambitious recovery timeline -- with complete rebuilding of all damaged plants,[41] and full production expected to be restored by October 2011[42] -- has put Nissan ahead of competitors such as Toyota.