Renault’s Not Giving Up On Carlos Ghosn Just Yet

Nissan has fired Carlos Ghosn. So has Mitsubishi, which announced its intention to dismiss the implicated executive from its board. But Renault, it seems, it standing by its top dog.

“Mr. Ghosn, temporarily incapacitated, remains Chairman and Chief Executive Officer,” the French automaker‘s board announced late yesterday. But since he remains in custody of Japanese officials, it’s appointed a temporary chairman and chief executive.

The board met, and will continue to meet, under the chairmanship of Philippe Lagayette, its lead independent board director and head of J.P. Morgan’s Paris office. Meanwhile the company’s chief operating officer Thierry Bolloré has been named deputy CEO and will temporarily assume all the executive authority granted to Ghosn.

While Renault apparently refuses to give up on its embattled chief executive, it’s not ignoring the charges levied against him, or the implications for its operations and those of the Alliance of which it is part. The board has requested that Nissan grant it access to the evidence of Ghosn’s alleged financial misconduct “on the basis of the principles of transparence, trust and mutual respect set forth in the Alliance Charter.”

However the French automaker approaches the issue, though, it will surely be evaluating what it’s future might look like in the absence of Ghosn’s leadership. The greater question being asked at the moment, though, is what might become of the Alliance that Ghosn had forged between Renault, Nissan, and Mitsubishi – not to mention Russian manufacturer Avtovaz, the chair of whose board Ghosn vacated just a couple of years ago as he stepped in to lead Mitsubishi.