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Jean-Dominique Senard’s job was never going to be easy.
The chairman of Renault was appointed to his current job a year ago, after it had become clear that his predecessor Carlos Ghosn could hardly work from a Japanese jail.
Since then, Senard has fought battles on many fronts, including some he hadn’t suspected when he took over after a stellar business career that had taken him to the top of tire-maker Michelin.
His first priority was to mend fences with Nissan NSANY, -1.87%, the Japanese autos group in which Renault RNO, -2.35% holds a 43% stake.
After a year of hits and misses that included completely overhauling both companies’ top management, reports that Nissan is mulling a plan to split from Renault sent the French group’s shares tanking nearly 4% on Monday.
According to the Financial Times, the plans include dividing engineering and manufacturing, and a change in the Nissan board.
It’s hard to see how the plans might work in practice. Both companies are so intertwined that undoing their so-called alliance might prove impossible. It may be easy to make fish soup out of a fish tank, but the reverse operation is more problematic.
Since he took the helm, Senard has been keen to insist that he saw his main goal as reviving the joint venture, and soothing Japanese minds worried about Ghosn’s plans for further integration of the two companies — or three, since they also include Mitsubishi MSBHY, -0.98%.
But what Renault needs now is a real boss with a real plan. Senard is just the chairman of a board that fired Thierry Bolloré, Ghosn’s successor as chief executive, in October. Since then the group has been looking for a replacement.
Senard has also found out that the French state, which holds a 15% stake in Renault, is an overbearing and meddling shareholder. After almost clinching a merger deal with rival car maker Fiat Chrysler FCAU, -0.70% Senard ran into last-minute opposition from the Macron government, for reasons that remain unclear. Fiat has now merged with Renault’s rival Peugeot UG, -0.29%.
Renault’s shares are down almost 40% since November 2018 — before Ghosn was arrested at Tokyo airport. Nissan’s shares, down 38%, haven’t fared much better. The two companies obviously need to sort out their current mess together. But Renault won’t be able to do this without a proper boss who can both deal with the Japanese and keep the French government at bay.
