Shareholder Proposal at Nissan AGM Calls for Ghosn's Return, But Legal and Practical Barriers Block Comeback

Nissan recently held its annual general meeting, where a shareholder submitted a highly controversial proposal calling for the reappointment of Carlos Ghosn as CEO. This motion was part of a broader set of demands seeking the removal of current CEO Ivan Espinosa. A shareholder backing the proposal acknowledged that Ghosn had faced criminal charges but argued that Nissan still needed a strong-willed leader like him. Ghosn joined Nissan in 1999 and spearheaded sweeping cost-cutting measures and organizational reforms that turned around the automaker—then suffering from seven consecutive years of losses and heavy debt—within just one year. Over the following years, he led Nissan in repaying more than two trillion yen in debt. He also engineered the formation of the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance, integrating resources across the three companies to make the alliance the world’s second-largest automotive group by annual sales volume at its peak. Additionally, Ghosn drove Nissan’s entry into the Chinese market, establishing Dongfeng Nissan as a joint venture with Dongfeng Motor Corporation in 2003—a venture that for many years maintained annual sales exceeding one million vehicles. Since Ghosn’s departure in 2018, Nissan has struggled with persistent operational difficulties, including volatile financial performance, falling share prices, delayed electrification efforts, and repeated massive losses. To ease financial pressure, the company sold its headquarters building and implemented cost-reduction measures under current management, such as closing seven plants and cutting 20,000 jobs. Yet these actions have failed to reverse the downward trends in both sales and profitability. Some shareholders attribute Nissan’s current predicament to the absence of decisive leadership and thus nostalgically recall Ghosn’s assertive management style. However, Ghosn’s return to Nissan is practically unfeasible. In November 2018, he was arrested in Japan on allegations of underreporting his compensation and misappropriating company funds. He then secretly fled Japan in late 2019 via private jet to Lebanon. Japanese prosecutors have continued pursuing legal action against him, and France issued an arrest warrant in 2022 over separate allegations involving misuse of Renault funds. Ghosn is now wanted by multiple countries, and because Lebanon lacks extradition treaties with both Japan and France, he cannot legally return to Japan to assume any role at Nissan. Even if Ghosn were to participate remotely in management, his fugitive status would expose Nissan to significant compliance risks and regulatory scrutiny. Moreover, Ghosn’s original ouster stemmed from complex power struggles between Renault and Nissan over equity stakes and governance within the alliance—dynamics that have since been fundamentally reshaped, rendering the prior management framework obsolete. His autocratic leadership style also clashes with Nissan’s current corporate governance structure and traditional Japanese business culture. Nissan’s challenges today—including strategic indecision, lagging electrification, weakened alliance synergy, and declining global competitiveness—cannot be resolved through a single personnel change. While shareholder sentiment reflects deep dissatisfaction with the status quo, the real path forward lies in implementing a credible medium- to long-term recovery plan, strengthening product portfolios and accelerating the transition to new energy vehicles to rebuild market confidence through tangible results.