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Opinion
A lesson in Nissan chairman Carlos Ghosn’s downfall, for Angela Merkel and other long-serving leaders: leave when you can
- Bill Emmott says German Chancellor Angela Merkel should learn from the Nissan executive’s mistake. Ghosn failed to leave when he could have last year, and now his legacy is going up in flames
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Bill Emmott, a former editor-in-chief of The Economist, is the author of The Fate of the West.
The spectacular rise and fall of Carlos Ghosn, “Le Cost Killer” who saved Nissan after 1999 and built a powerful partnership between the Japanese carmaker, France’s Renault and Japan’s Mitsubishi Motors, resembles a kabuki play, with the Japanese powers that be asserting themselves in the end. But Ghosn’s downfall is really more like a classic Greek tragedy. This is a story of hubris meeting its nemesis. And an obvious parallel can be drawn between Ghosn and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Even business or political superstars risk disaster if they overestimate their power and outstay their welcome. That is what Merkel has done by remaining in office for 13 years, making her the longest-serving chancellor since Helmut Kohl held the post, from 1982 to 1998.
Within recent memory, Merkel was cast, rightly or wrongly, in heroic terms for her role in stabilising the euro single currency. But when she leaves office, probably in the next few months, she will become a much diminished, perhaps even humiliated, figure.
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