Carlos Ghosn

Carlos Ghosn was born in Brazil to Lebanese immigrant parents and attended the most prestigious French academic institutions, graduating from the École Polytechnique and then the École des Mines. He built a distinguished corporate career at Michelin and Renault before being sent to Japan in 1999 to rescue Nissan — which was technically insolvent, losing money on every car sold and burdened by $19 billion in debt. Ghosn executed the Nissan Revival Plan with remarkable speed: closing five factories, cutting 21,000 jobs, and overhauling procurement, within three years making Nissan profitable again. The turnaround became a business school case study in cross-cultural management and crisis leadership. He simultaneously ran Renault and Nissan — a dual role unprecedented in the industry — and orchestrated Nissan's acquisition of Mitsubishi in 2016, creating the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance which briefly became the world's largest automaker by volume. His story took a dramatic turn in November 2018 when he was arrested on board a private jet in Japan, charged with underreporting income and misuse of company assets. He jumped bail in 2019, escaping Japan to Lebanon in a dramatic operation involving a private jet and concealment. He remains in Lebanon and contests all charges.