Original subtitles

Success can be a problem.

It can be dangerous because you may forget what made the success.

You may become self-centered, arrogant.

If you learn from failure, it can carry a lot of positives for you.

If you carry out by success, it may prepare big deceptions for the future.

When Carlos Ghosn was the head of Renault and Nissan,

you know, you could see it in his eyes and the way he spoke,

he was a man who played by the rules.

Everything was by the book for Carlos Ghosn.

At least, so it seemed.

Breaking news.

Nissan has revealed that its chairman has been arrested.

It not only seemed like he had the Midas touch, he did.

The rock star chairman.

The savior of Nissan.

He's in a global super league of business leaders.

Time magazine calls him one of the most respected

business executives in the world, ahead of Bill Gates.

And here in Japan, he's nothing less than a national hero.

It's kind of the story of Icarus.

The guy soared to the highest of highs

and then he falls to the lowest of lows.

Tokyo prosecutors have rearrested

Nissan former chairman, Carlos Ghosn.

This is an extraordinary situation.

It is getting worse. He is once again behind bars.

People were just absolutely stunned.

And a lot of people were actively saying, "This is a coup.

This is crazy."

We discovered significant misconduct.

We know it's a conspiracy.

He betrayed my trust, my respect.

He started saying, "I need to get out.

If I stay in Japan, it's gonna be a slow death."

Breaking news. Carlos Ghosn on the run.

Carlos Ghosn has fled Tokyo.

The plan was so brilliant because it was an optical illusion.

It was the most extraordinary thing.

There's some confusion about how Ghosn escaped.

I'm risking my life to save his life.

It seemed like the perfect crime.

You don't run unless you got something to run from.

Do I feel betrayed? Absolutely.

We're up against two competing narratives.

Is Carlos Ghosn a victim...

or a villain?

- We're ready for you. - Can I come?

- Yeah. - Good.

Carlos Ghosn. It seems that he remains a mystery.

Leadership is not something which is born with you.

It's something that, within the special circumstances of life,

anyone can exercise.

Ordinary people, normal people, hardworking people.

You can achieve whatever you want in the world...

as long as you're willing to take the challenge.

What's in the box?

And ready to take the risk.

Is the shot okay? Anything wrong, or...

Looks very good from where I am.

- You happy? - Good.

So take us back to November 2018. You know, why were you flying to Japan?

What was on your mind at the time?

I was going for a regular week in Japan.

So you had no sense of a plot? You had no...

- No. No. No. - Sense there was something going on?

I was very calm. I had a board meeting of Nissan.

I had a meeting with the Governor of Tokyo.

I have also one of my daughter who was visiting me in Japan.

So I was happy. I was going to have a nice dinner with her.

And I was going just for a normal week.

But at arrival at the airport,

they said that there was something wrong with my passport.

"Can you come with us to the office?"

And there was a small guy sitting on the side,

and this is when he came to me and said,

"Look, I am working with the Tokyo prosecutor office.

We want you to come with us because we have some questions to ask you."

And then this I say, "Well, this must be a misunderstanding.

I have my daughter waiting. I have dinner."

He said "No, no. I'm sorry." I said, "Can I call her?"

He said, "No, no. You cannot use your phone."

And this is where I understood that this was very serious.

Breaking news.

In the past few minutes, Nissan has revealed that

its chairman has been arrested.

It's a fall from grace as brutal as it is sudden.

Carlos Ghosn, the all-powerful boss,

arrested as he got off his private jet in Tokyo.

The whole world collapsed for me.

First, I was shocked. I was traumatized, you know.

It was horrible.

Numerous significant acts of misconduct have been uncovered such as the person...

It took me some time to realize that Nissan

was launching a massive campaign in the media manipulating public opinion.

We have directors of Nissan

who had some very harsh words for Ghosn.

He'd managed by fear, by direction, by dictatorial...

They were on the offensive everywhere.

And not only in Japan, but particularly in France.

The era of Carlos Ghosn is officially over.

Last night, Mr. Carlos Ghosn submitted his resignation

to Renault's provisional management.

The board of Renault supported me for a few weeks.

Then at a certain point in time, they shot me in the head.

The French people love Renault.

They say their blood cells

or their heart is in the form of a diamond which is a symbol of Renault.

It was a quite, successful firm with 30 years of continuous growth.

But in '94, '95,

we were facing major difficulties.

I mean, we were looking face-to-face with death.

DÉVASTÉ - CALAMITÉ - FAILLITE - CATACLYSME

LA FIN?

But then one of the strategists came up with the name of Carlos Ghosn

whom I had never heard about.

My first meeting with Schweitzer was a very cold

and structured and rational meeting.

He obviously was a very different person than me

and I felt the difference immediately, but it's fine.

He was a very impressive person with a drive and intensity,

which was very exciting.

You know, he was the sort of man you felt would forge ahead.

The chairman, CEO and president of Michelin North America, Mr. Carlos Ghosn.

Mr. Chairman, welcome to the program.

I'm glad to be here.

He had very impressive track record at Michelin.

I mean, he had managed a major merger in the US and return to profits.

So the possibility of a quick turnaround was clear in my mind and in our mind.

A lot of people said, "You have zero chance of being successful."

But it was very exciting, in a certain way, to say, "You know what?

I have the opportunity to prove them all wrong."

So I told him, "Well, I want to recruit you."

And, Ghosn said, "Well, thank you very much.

I will come."

I must mention one point which I found interesting.

François Michelin told me, "Look, you should not leave him alone.

You should phone him every week."

And I found that a bit surprising

because it showed that maybe there was something a bit fragile.

Ghosn was in a league of his own, and that fascinated me.

But he's also kind of an outsider.

He's come from the Amazon Rainforest, born in the, like, backwater of Brazil,

basically, in a place called Porto Velho...

to Lebanese mum, Lebanese dad.

I mean, it is the Amazon, and it's tough.

And so when Ghosn was... was very young, um, he had ki... weak health...

and they moved back to Lebanon.

And then as a teenager, he came to France, ended up at a university in Paris.

And I think growing up in these different cultures gave him...

a-a huge competitive advantage in,

you know, a globalized and globalizing world.

This man is the right-hand man

to the President of Renault.

Carlos Ghosn starts work tomorrow.

Carlos Ghosn's vision, first of all,

was you've gotta be profitable and then everything flows from that.

So he gets to Renault, and he cuts costs, and he does it savagely.

The French carmaker Renault plans to close a plant in Belgium.

The decision means the loss of over 3,000 jobs.

I said, "Look, this plethora of people must cost a fortune.

What are the strengths, and what are the weaknesses?

So we can build on our strength and try to erase our weakness."

That's all.

He's ruthless. Absolutely.

I mean, if the company needs to shed 5,000 jobs,

"Very sorry. Thank you for your work.

Don't let the door hit you on the way out."

Carlos Ghosn's nickname:

le cost cutter.

The result is a spectacular turnaround for Renault.

A profit of

2,300,000,000 francs.

- Nicole? - Papa?

Maman.

It was an astounding success,

but still, I felt that we were too small...

too French, and that we had to internationalize.

Therefore, we should have a partner

whose strengths were in different markets than ours.

And American companies, they were simply too expensive for us.

But Asian companies afraid of facing bankruptcy,

I think that Ghosn saw this as an opportunity.

Simple as that.

Nissan, one of Japan's biggest corporate names,

has gone into loss.

Today Nissan Corporation...

Nissan cars...

Nissan Motors released its results at 3pm today.

The car industry in Japan is without a doubt

the biggest source of national pride.

But when Carlos Ghosn came in 1999,

I mean, Nissan was dead in the water.

A respected carmaker but troubled and losing money.

I mean, nobody wanted it.

Even the banks that used to lend out money like candy were just like,

"Okay, no more."

But he believed that he could rescue this basket case of a company.

Nissan just needed an injection of cash.

So what Renault decided to do is take a stake in the company of 37%.

But instead of straight merger,

the two companies remain two companies.

Essentially, what they've decided to do is

to create this kind of weird construction... that was the alliance...

And kind of support each other.

Other companies considered Nissan too risky.

It was losing money on a continuous basis.

It was heavily indebted...

but I had the best turnaround expert in the automobile industry.

Carlos Ghosn.

I told him, look, "I think we can do it.

If we fail, you will be fired.

I will be fired."

For me, the success of this alliance,

that was signed in 1999, was based on two principles.

Okay?

Trust and sincere, effective collaboration.

And if any one of the two were missing, this whole thing doesn't have any meaning.

When I first heard his name, I didn't know almost anything.

But if you imagine that some strange... Stranger suddenly restructuring Nissan,

it could be a big shock, I think.

And we must address the real problems of the company

without any compromise.

It will require a lot of sacrifices...

but I'm tell... I'm telling you,

I'm feeding a lot of determination into the company to do it.

And without any compromise...

For Carlos Ghosn, there was the immediate problem of a culture clash.

In fact, some of the longtimers... I mean, in... in the Japanese parlance,

they would refer to them as the "old boys"...

Were deeply suspicious of Renault's intentions and some of them,

frankly, a little bit resentful of this outsider.

I knew I was playing on my future and my credibility.

But then this was it, it was a totally foreign country, different culture.

And there was no reference, there was no book,

there was nothing explained to you how you do these kind of things.

Just need to imagine and do it.

- Thank you, Harao - San.

The key facts about Nissan point to one reality.

Nissan is in bad shape.

His plan was basically to turn 20 billion in debt

into a profit in a couple of years.

I mean, it was unheard of.

This effort will gather suppliers...

He was going to slash tens of thousands of jobs, close factories,

which frankly was shocking in Japan.

You know, people don't get fired or laid off in Japan.

The reaction was "Wow, this is brutal."

This is some... some real medicine.

I mean, he received death threats

and he had to have security with him at all times.

How he got through it was basically just trying not to overthink

and just put his head down and just charge forward

and just keep going and hope that it works.

I said from the beginning,

if I don't grow the company in three years, I'm out.

If I don't cut the debt in half in three years, I'm out.

So I needed every single minute of the day

and every single ounce of energy that I would have

in order to make it happen.

Carlos Ghosn is involved in everything, every decision.

He's involved in design, he's involved in the PR,

he's involved in the engineering, in the finance.

He has an agenda which is full to the brim.

- Quick response, quicker response. - Okay.

Wasn't sure if Mr. Ghosn's plan

was able to change Nissan at that time.

But a few months later, that action started showing improvement.

Nissan was getting out of the deep red.

The man they call the "cost killer"

was sent into a near-bankrupt Nissan two years ago.

That's when the revolution began.

After one year, we had incredible results.

My opponents said, "He tricked the books. This is fake."

"We're gonna see after one year."

And as you know, the second year came better,

the third year came better,

and then it was... it was over.

Then the image was built, the recovery was here...

and I became promoted to CEO of Nissan.

Thank you very much.

So he pulled it off in a pretty dramatic way?

Yeah, completely. Absolutely.

I mean, it not only seemed like he had the Midas touch, he did.

When I first went to live in Japan as a program director for Nissan,

he was at the peak of his popularity.

He couldn't walk in the street. He was a superhero.

He was a manga hero.

Everybody wanted to know what he was like.

Everybody wanted to know what the magic was.

Everybody wanted to understand

how he'd managed to turn Nissan around.

At that moment, he could do no wrong.

And to be honest, we all basked in the reflective glory

of working for Mr. Ghosn.

I think Ghosn enjoyed his newfound fame in Japan.

He gets the blue ribbon from the Japanese emperor.

Time magazine calls him

one of the most respected business executives in the world,

ahead of Bill Gates.

Suddenly, you know, he does dress better.

He... He starts to care about his image.

His appearance does begin to change.

He has an eye operation.

Before he wore these quite thick glasses.

His suits become maybe a little slimmer.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached a new era.

There was a survey at the time, you know, asking Japanese women,

you know, which man they would like to father their children with.

And Carlos Ghosn was right up there.

In those early days, he was very much the family man.

You know, his wife, Rita, at that time, um, and his kids were there, and he was...

trying to make it as balanced

as he could.

I was elected Father of the Year.

Wh-which was one of the award that I like the most,

which, by the way, surprised a lot my children.

They... They...

They said that the father of the year should be with his kids all the time,

so which obviously I... was not.

But, in a certain way, it...

Being elected Father of the Year in Japan showed a little bit the emotional bond

that started to be created between me and the country and with the public.

- It's a big square. - It's a huge...

It's just a big square from a good...

Well, there's always...

Ghosn barely ever talked about anything at a personal level.

He's not your, um, down the pub, friendly kind of a guy.

I mean, I think I knew him as well as most,

but to know him, w-wasn't... w-was to know him, at a work level.

It wasn't to know him, really, at a personal level.

He wasn't like that at all.

I think to really understand Carlos Ghosn

you have to know the whole story.

I am deputy director of the news magazine L'Obs.

I interviewed Carlos Ghosn frequently.

I have met many CEOs in my career.

Big bosses, French bosses, foreign bosses

but he was always very different.

There was always some kind of tension there.

So I started thinking, "What's his story?"

Something might not be right here.

Then I was talking with someone

who has known Ghosn for a long, long time...

and they said there is a mystery surrounding his father.

His father had supposedly spent some time in prison.

And that's all they would tell me.

This was a story that everyone in Lebanon knew,

but nobody dared to talk about it with Carlos Ghosn.

When you have this in your life

and you run one of the biggest companies in the world

you must keep this secret.

You must be afraid that one day it will come out.

Louis Schweitzer leaves today to his successor,

the fourth largest automotive group in the world.

- In French first, you know... - Okay.

The plan for my succession in 2005

was that he would relinquish his executive position at Nissan

and become chairman and CEO of Renault full-time.

Obviously, Schweitzer would have preferred for me to go directly for Renault

and abandoning Nissan, but I said I'm not gonna do it.

Frankly, I didn't want him to leave. I told him, you know,

"Louis, w-why don't you take another mandate?

Let me finish the job in Nissan."

But he was in a hurry to leave the job of CEO,

and wanted me to... to come back.

So, I decided to go for the two jobs.

He told me, "Look,

I will only stay on as CEO of Nissan till I find a good successor."

And quite stupidly, I must say, I believed him.

What a fool!

He's a superstar in the automobile world,

famed for breathing life back into Nissan.

Now also the new chief executive of Renault,

he'll be leading both firms at once.

It was unheard of for one man

to run two companies of that size simultaneously.

But... to be frank... Part of his motivation was also ambition.

You're gonna have one professional life,

use it to the maximum you can

and then life will give you much more opportunities than you think.

The issue with Ghosn is that he is running a French and a Japanese company

and obviously making a lot of money.

But you-you have to understand, culturally in France,

it's just not considered acceptable

to be making huge salaries the way they do in the US, right?

In the US, if you're running General Motors, or whatever,

you're making 20 million, 25 million, other people are making much more.

In France, that doesn't happen.

Excuse me, Mr. Ghosn, I have some questions for you.

Don't you want to talk about your salary?

Mr. Ghosn?

Anything at all?

Obviously, the French media didn't like the double compensation.

They didn't like the fact that compared to an average CEO in France,

I was overcompensated.

But for me, it's a question... It's a question of fairness.

I mean, my contribution to each company was very clear.

I committed to results, and I made money.

When a new Minister of Economy takes office,

the CEO of Renault comes to see him straight away.

It's dangerous

because one man's grip on power always ends badly.

He never liked it when we spoke about his salary

or his succession.

He would just lower his eyes and beat around the bush,

then drop three or four names,

never the right ones.

He had a strategy of presenting himself as indispensable.

But graveyards are populated with irreplaceable people.

At that stage, he was God, king, queen, prince,

all the power rested with him.

Ghosn looked like

an Asian dictator

in front of the board.

He was surrounded by "yes men"

when what he needed was challenge and debate.

But that was sorely lacking. That's the truth.

Ghosn was essentially free to do what he wants.

You know... there's very little oversight

and he has very few people challenging him.

And, you know, that's okay,

as long as Nissan's doing okay and Renault's doing okay.

But then the Financial Crisis hits...

that's a problem.

The worst financial crisis in modern times,

certainly the largest financial disaster in decades.

Markets plunged as much as 464 points.

Lehman Brothers have filed for bankruptcy.

Traders in Tokyo,

worried about a spreading US recession and credit turmoil, sent stocks down 3.9%.

2008 was a huge global crisis,

and it was a disaster for the car industry as a whole.

It was a car crash, it was an absolute car crash.

Nissan was about six weeks away from running out of cash

and almost everybody, including myself, would buy our own stationery.

I mean, it was that level of, you put your own money into...

Into basically keeping the... the... The com... the company going.

Renault had to get a loan from the government,

Nissan weren't sure how they were gonna pay payroll.

And you're trying to preserve cash, and you're trying to survive,

and your share price is going down the toilet.

For Ghosn, everything at work is on fire.

Already, running two companies is impossible when its calm waters,

but this is the Financial Crisis,

and he's trying to keep these two companies afloat.

There was almost always a crisis in one company or the other.

We just saw him less and less,

and you saw it again with the tsunami in Japan.

I'm in my office at Nissan, and you hear this "buh-boom."

And then, I'm on the 21st floor, and this building starts to shake.

It must have lasted nine minutes.

We're scared to death. I thought we were done.

A massive earthquake has hit the northeast of Japan,

triggering a devastating tsunami.

The first thing I did was to go send an email to Carlos Ghosn,

'cause he was in Renault.

It was basically, "We just had this big earthquake,

so many people died.

We better get together quick to figure out what we're gonna do."

But at the same time, he's got his other company,

and he's got to lead that through the Financial Crisis.

I was in Japan. I stayed in Japan,

as did many of my colleagues because we were... We felt a...

A bond with the Japanese that were going through... through hell.

But he didn't come, I think, for almost ten days.

It showed that, you know, he wasn't a superhuman.

A lot of mistakes got made.

Both companies craved his attention.

And when it wasn't there, then... Then basically the cancer started to bite.

Everything just keeps spiraling out of control, spiraling out of control.

And Ghosn looks like an absentee boss because he's not even there.

And then...

you looked over the fence and your boss

was seemingly having this celebrity lifestyle.

And that started to irk.

I was fed up of... of basically defending Ghosn when, underneath,

I was really starting to resent his style.

I also became aware of the issues with Rita and the breakup of his marriage,

and it was obvious to everybody that he wasn't wearing a wedding ring.

I mean, frankly, in my mind,

there was a clear change in his priorities over that period.

I met Carlos at a gala in New York.

I was on a high because, he was super charming and super charismatic.

I mean, when he walks into the room,

you feel how powerful he is in his character and his intelligence,

and... when he walks in a room, everyone looks at him.

I... I was, magnetized by her.

I... I... I liked her instantly.

Very joyful person, very spontaneous, very pretty.

So, for me, it was, "Wow."

I guess this is when the spark happened between us

and, we started seeing each other.

Carole is a lot more glamorous than Rita.

She's kind of this tall blonde, loves to have fun.

She definitely has an aura, and she likes the finer things in life.

People criticized me, that, "Since he met her, he's changed.

He's become more superficial."

But maybe it was the phase of his life.

Maybe 'cause when you're happy, and you're in love,

you wanna do fun things.

You change. It's not all about business.

The party in Versailles, paid for by Renault and Nissan,

it was meant to be celebrating the alliance.

But if you look at the guest list, it is majority friends and family.

There was his lawyers, his kids,

people who he knew from his days in Lebanon, from his old school.

All of these people there,

essentially not because they had anything to do with the alliance,

but because they had a personal or business relationship

with Carlos Ghosn himself.

And it was on his birthday, which was a bad look.

Ladies and gentlemen, and dear friends,

good evening and welcome.

As some of you know, this month marks the 15th anniversary

of the Renault-Nissan Alliance.

While that's not why we are gathered here,

the anniversary did make us realize the time was right

to thank those who have helped our alliance

grow and prosper.

He has a speech saying,

"Thank you, to all of you, for what you've done to support the alliance."

But actually, what they've done is just supported Carlos Ghosn.

And so, we get into this problem of,

like, "Where does Carlos Ghosn end? Where does the alliance start?"

If you celebrate 15 years of the alliance,

it would not seem completely unnatural to invite the guy who created it.

And this was not the case.

I was not invited.

Therefore, I did not consider it a celebration of 15 years of the alliance.

There was quite a lot of resentment in the company.

He was enjoying the fruits of his labor rather more than he should have been.

Ghosn was no demigod in France,

and having those parties at Versailles was a mistake.

It was a sign of the risks associated with having strong personality.

That is the risk of losing touch... with reality.

French carmaker, Renault,

has seen its shares rise up at 8% after reports of merger negotiations

with its Japanese partner, Nissan.

Neither Renault nor Nissan have commented on the situation.

There was always, from the day Carlos Ghosn became CEO,

a fear within Nissan that eventually the alliance would become a merger.

But he's always said, "Mergers don't work in the auto industry.

I don't want a merger."

I cannot make one team

of Japanese and French,

managing a company which would be neither Japanese nor French.

It doesn't work.

But then what Ghosn is saying changes.

Will Nissan and Renault be merged?

- Will it look different? - Um,

- nobody can answer this question. - Okay.

- Then next question. - Nobody.

At that point, the Japanese are completely alarmed that they...

they cannot trust him.

Nissan-Renault looking to make their marriage official,

and reports say now they may officially merge.

There was a group of people that feared

that the merger would erase Nissan as the Japanese company that it is,

and it would also install Ghosn, in their telling,

as almost like this pharaoh, top of the pyramid, ruler for life,

godlike character that would be not removable in the future.

As a head of Nissan, I need to protect the company.

This is my duty.

That was my position.

Ghosn was thinking about a merger, I'm sure.

But I think bigger than that, Carlos Ghosn was obsessed

with his standing in the industry.

He wanted the adulation.

He wanted very clearly to be, in control of the...

The biggest car company in the world, but he also wanted to be paid for it.

I think Ghosn believes that money is part of your scorecard,

what he calls your "scorecard," which is, like, part of your worth, right?

Your self-worth.

And so, if you make lots of money, then to him, you're worth more.

I... I have always looked for autonomy,

which means that you don't depend on other people to conduct your own life.

So, when you say money is important,

you should put it in this context of autonomy.

Intellectual autonomy, emotional autonomy, physical autonomy, and financial autonomy.

So later, I got access to the contents of Ghosn's phone,

which were a bit of a Rosetta Stone in this case.

And in one of his phone notes,

investigators believe that he's tallying up his wealth across the world.

He has 52 million in Japan, 62 million in Europe,

31.5 million in Switzerland,

39 million in Lebanon, 97 million in America.

And then he writes at the bottom...

which means, "Complete through merger to a billion."

Breaking news.

Nissan's chairman, Carlos Ghosn has been arrested.

Carlos Ghosn has been held in solitary confinement.

We were scared.

They wanted me to turn on Carlos Ghosn.

I think he is a man who committed a crime.

Is it half a chance it is a palace coup?

Who are you people?

I don't think we've ever seen a scandal like this,

where there are things that were found that don't pass the smell test.

There was a light at the end of the tunnel, and I was that light.

My mission was to get him out of there.