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Auto industry guru demurs on GM

Rick Wagoner, chairman and CEO of General Motors Corp, announces plans to cut 30,000 manufacturing jobs at the company's Detroit headquarters on Monday. PHOTO: AP

Carlos Ghosn, the turnaround star of the global auto industry who now heads both Nissan and Renault, has no advice to give to stumbling US rival General Motors.

"I have a lot of respect for companies, particularly those which are struggling because I don't know what kind of problems that they are really facing," he said yesterday, adding that being an insider at an automaker is necessary to understand its problem. "They know it, but we don't."

As chief executive at Nissan Motor Co, Ghosn engineered a dramatic revival at Japan's No. 2 automaker automaker from near bankruptcy to profitability and stable growth after Renault SA of France took a stake in Nissan in 1999.

This year, he also took the helm at Renault, taking on the unusual role of heading two major automakers. He has promised to announce a business plan for Renault in February next year.

Ghosn, 51, played down fears of a possible US-Japan trade war at a time when US automakers General Motors Corp and Ford Motor Co are losing market share to carmakers like Nissan, Toyota Motor Corp and Honda Motor Co.

Earlier this week, General Motors said it will cut more than a quarter of its North American manufacturing jobs and close 12 facilities by 2008. Overall, GM lost almost US$4 billion in the first nine months of this year, hit by falling sales and rising health care costs. Its share of the US market has shrunk to 26.2 percent from 33 percent a decade ago.

Meanwhile, Nissan reported an 8 percent jump in its July-September quarter as strong sales around the world offset rising raw material costs and discount incentives to sell cars in North America.

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Japanese automakers were criticized for taking away US jobs and faced a political backlash in the US.

Since then, Japanese automakers have opened plants in the US and most of the Nissan, Toyota and Honda cars sold in the US today are manufactured at US plants.

"Nissan is an American company," Ghosn said at a luncheon at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan in Tokyo.

Ghosn said his key goals were profitability, leadership in technology and innovation and customer satisfaction -- not growth or market share for their own sakes, which should follow as consequences for good results.

He also said the secret to the success of the Renault-Nissan alliance was the way management motivated workers, making everyone feel part of the group. Workers at both companies are equal peers in a partnership; it wasn't as though one company was taking over the other, he said.

Renault owns 44 percent of Nissan, while Nissan owns 50 percent of Renault.
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