Renault awaits new CEO after remarkable era of Schweitzer

[tgagneguam]

Renault awaits new CEO after remarkable era of Schweitzer

By Christine Tierney / The Detroit News

Carlos Ghosn will get star billing at French carmaker Renault SA's annual meeting April 29. Shareholders are expected to appoint him CEO after his remarkable turnaround of Renault's biggest investment -- Japan's Nissan Motor Co.

But longtime investors will feel at least as much gratitude for outgoing chief executive Louis Schweitzer.

Little known outside Europe, Schweitzer was the driving force behind the Renault-Nissan alliance. As he said in 1999, he 'bet the farm' with an audacious $5.4 billion investment in the then-foundering Japanese automaker.

Schweitzer, 62, a lanky executive with a reserved, slightly awkward manner, seems more like an ivory-tower intellectual than a leader capable of transforming a second-rate, regional carmaker into a powerful global player.

A grand-nephew of renowned physician and humanist Albert Schweitzer, he enjoyed a privileged background -- but hardly one that prepared him for the rugged challenges he would face when the French government appointed him CEO of Renault in 1992. (The state was then its majority shareholder.)

After graduating from the elite Ecole Nationale d'Administration, Schweitzer went to work for the French Budget Department. In 1984, he became chief of staff for Socialist Prime Minister Laurent Fabius. Two years later, though he had no automotive experience, he was assigned a high-level post at Renault.

His first big project as CEO -- merging Renault with Sweden's AB Volvo -- collapsed in acrimony. But Schweitzer retained lessons that served him well later.

In the mid-1990s, he was already casting about for a potential successor when a headhunter introduced him to Carlos Ghosn. The rest is history -- Ghosn crafted a restructuring in 1997 that pulled Renault out of the red, but Schweitzer took the heat for the closure of a Belgian assembly plant that drew huge protests in Europe.

Schweitzer could see that, even with a leaner structure, Renault would not thrive on its own. When he approached Nissan, the Japanese were more interested in a deal with DaimlerChrysler AG. But it was too soon after the 1998 merger of Daimler-Benz and Chrysler and DaimlerChrysler called off the talks...

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[1BadPig]

I thought Carlos Ghosn is the heir apparent?