Nissan’s Carlos Ghosn was a tall nail but was he really a bent one?

The arrest of Carlos Ghosn and the move to oust him as chairman of Nissan in Japan has stunned the auto industry of which he’s a global megastar — serving simultaneously as head of Renault in France, and having bolted together the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance that built more than ten million cars last year. Nissan has accused the Lebanese–Brazilian engineer of violating Japanese securities law by understating his remuneration in the company’s public documents, and of ‘numerous other significant acts of misconduct… such as personal use of company assets’. That allegedly includes using Nissan funds to buy properties for his own use in Beirut and Rio de Janeiro.

We must of course wait to hear the evidence. To western ears, an understatement of executive pay in the annual report sounds like an accusation against the company’s auditors as much as the recipients of the bunce. But I’m reminded from my own experience of working in Tokyo of a common expression there: ‘The nail that stands out gets hammered down.’