Carlos Ghosn’s testimony on Tuesday will divide the business world.
Some will see him as an entitled corporate demagogue caught with his hand in the cookie jar and seeking someone else to blame. Others will say that he’s correctly identifying a conspiracy against him by executives opposed to his strategy.
The latter seems the more likely. After 20 mostly spectacular years at the Japanese flagship car brand, Ghosn was dethroned just as he was on the brink of driving through a closer integration with Nissan’s French partner, Renault.
Such a move would, as he pointed out today, have made Nissan less autonomous and put some poor-performing Nissan bosses’ jobs at threat. So, he says, the plotters and backstabbers struck with a cooked-up list of charges.
Why give his version of events credence? Because we know unrest had been rising both inside Nissan and in the wider Japanese business community. It seems far too convenient for a sudden rash of misconduct to appear just at the critical moment for the Ghosn plan.
Whether you believe he’s guilty or not, there’s a bigger point nobody can deny.
The abuse of his human rights by one of the richest, most developed countries in the world has been a disgrace that should worry all businesses working in Japan.
For 108 days he was imprisoned while the prosecution scrambled to find evidence against him. He was then re-arrested last week on further spurious grounds. His wife had her passport seized, their apartment was ransacked and she fled the country in fear.
The only reason we got to hear from him on Tuesday was because he recorded his message before the raid.
Who knows how long he will be back on prison rations while the prosecution scrambles to get a case together?
Ghosn said on Tuesday his greatest wish was for a fair trial. In Japan’s legal system? Some chance.
Wish good fortune to brave backers
It takes courage for a blue-chip fund manager to oppose the City consensus and back a founder’s vision over corporate blandness.
So Investec deserves applause for not just backing Superdry founder Julian Dunkerton’s coup, but putting its money where its vote was, buying 3 million extra shares to take its stake up to 10%.
I’d expected other institutions to sell, particularly as the share price tumbled, but so far, that doesn’t seem to have happened. Bloomberg data today shows Invesco has also been buying since the vote, nearly doubling its stake to 2.6 million shares, or 3%.
Of the major shareholders, the only seller has been BlackRock, which trimmed a million from its 3 million shareholding.
If the collapse of Debenhams teaches us anything, it is that owning shares in any UK retailer is a terrifying prospect.
Either Dunkerton hypnotised investors with some magic spell or the markets think he just might turn this struggling business around. Good on them.
