PARIS—The resignation of Carlos Ghosn as chief executive and chairman of Renault SA brings down the curtain on a decadeslong career that made him a symbol of globalization’s sprawl as well as its pitfalls.
On Thursday, Renault’s board tapped Michelin chief Jean-Dominique Senard to succeed Mr. Ghosn as chairman of the auto maker and appointed Thierry Bolloré, Renault’s deputy CEO, to take over as chief executive. The moves came after France’s finance minister said Mr. Ghosn had resigned those posts Wednesday night from the confines of his Japanese jail cell.
Mr. Ghosn has been charged by Japanese prosecutors with understating his compensation on eight years of Nissan financial reports and causing Nissan to pay the company of a Saudi friend who helped him with a personal financial problem. He denies any wrongdoing.
During his tenure at the top of Renault and its alliance partner Nissan Motors Co., Mr. Ghosn broke through cultural and operational barriers that once kept auto makers moored to their native lands—a feat that many considered impossible at the time. In cracking that code, he became a model for auto executives and the embodiment of globalism itself, jetting between continents as he set higher and higher targets.
Mr. Ghosn is widely credited with saving Nissan but in corporate France, where he cut his teeth, the executive was seen in a less flattering light. From the halls of government to the factory towns that dot the French countryside, Mr. Ghosn’s rise was viewed as a sign of globalism’s excesses.
He collected paychecks that were hefty by French standards, though in line with many multinational companies. He was laser-focused on wringing cost cuts out of Renault’s alliance with Nissan and Mitsubishi Motors Corp. And his constant travels meant he spent less time getting to know workers on the factory floor in France.
“It is an impossible job to manage such a vast empire,” said Louis Schweitzer, a longtime CEO at Renault who hired Mr. Ghosn in 1996.
Mr. Ghosn, who was arrested in November, said his pay was justified by his performance. His defenders said his outsized personality and round-the-clock work ethic was the glue that kept the alliance between Renault and Nissan and Mitsubishi together.
“If you spend your time not talking about the benefits of globalization, instead focusing on some of the excesses,” Mr. Ghosn told The Wall Street Journal in a 2017 interview, “you end up in a situation where people don’t understand.”
Renault is a vastly different company than the one he joined 23 years ago. More international and profitable, it is the linchpin of a globe-spanning alliance that pumped out more than 10 million vehicles in 2017, though the French auto maker doesn’t sell in the U.S. Renault holds 43% of Nissan, wielding the power to appoint some of the Japanese auto maker’s board members, while Nissan holds 15% of Renault with no voting rights.
The exit of Mr. Ghosn has exacerbated tensions, with Nissan employees demanding a change in the balance of power within the alliance.
Mr. Ghosn joined Renault in 1996, when the company was about to report its biggest loss ever. It was his cost cutting that helped Renault return to profit and accumulate the cash that it used to pay for a $5 billion investment in Nissan in 1999.
Mr. Schweitzer dispatched Mr. Ghosn to Japan, where his work turning around the Japanese car marker is industry legend and earned him the Légion d’Honneur, one of France’s highest honors, in 2002. He quickly became known for his results-oriented management style, particularly his willingness to reveal profit and sales targets to the markets—then to deliver on them.
Mr. Ghosn was riding high by the time he returned to Renault in 2005 as chief executive. Renault needed restructuring, but wasn’t under the same financial duress as Nissan had once been. That made the company more resistant to change, while both the government and unions opposed job cuts.
He got to work slashing costs, launching many new models and increasing the proportion of sales outside Europe significantly, all without cutting jobs.
Mr. Ghosn tried to add General Motors Co. to the Renault-Nissan alliance, but the talks with the U.S. firm failed.
When the 2008 financial crisis hit, he delayed construction of factories in India and scrapped plans to make bigger cars with higher profit margins. The synergies with Nissan, however, allowed Renault to ride out the yearslong economic downturn in Europe that followed, winning Mr. Ghosn praise inside the company.
While Mr. Ghosn was celebrated in Japan for saving Nissan, France’s clubby business establishment regarded him with suspicion.
“In France he didn’t have the same status as in Japan,” said Christophe Sirugue, a former industry minister. “He was considered a big CEO, but people didn’t know why.”
There also was frustration that Mr. Ghosn spent so much time away running Nissan. The companies were eight time zones and some 6,000 miles apart. Mr. Ghosn carried two briefcases, one for each company, and kept his diaries and papers separate. He also received two separate pay checks.
In 2011, Mr. Ghosn was forced to apologize to three senior managers Renault fired after wrongly accusing them of selling industrial secrets related to its electric-car program. The episode eroded his credibility and raised questions whether one person should oversee two giants.
More recently, Mr. Ghosn sparred with the French government in 2015 the government’s stake in Renault increased to nearly 20% from 15%, making the it the largest shareholder. The maneuver allowed France to apply a freshly passed law that doubled the voting rights of the state and other long-term investors.
To assuage Japanese concerns over French influence, Mr. Ghosn negotiated for Nissan to have the right to increase its Renault stake if the French auto maker meddles too much in its business.
The concession rankled at Renault. “Renault, de facto, lost some of its ability to act within Nissan,” said one former Renault executive.
Under pressure to prepare a succession plan, Mr. Ghosn named a No. 2 at Renault last year and took a step back to focus on strategy and the Nissan alliance. He also negotiated the addition of Mitsubishi to the alliance in 2016.
“When you have a single leader for two companies, you can’t stop people saying he favored one or the other, said one executive who has worked closely with Mr. Ghosn at both car makers. “He never listened. He did his job.”
Write to Nick Kostov at Nick.Kostov@wsj.com
