Automotive retail: A sector for the senseless?
The arrest of Carlos Ghosn – chairman of Nissan and Mitsubishi, chief executive at Renault and a leading light in the motor industry – has highlighted an unsavoury aspect of the entire sector: excessive levels of remuneration, bordering on greed. We have come across several smaller companies closer to home which investors would do well to avoid.
The industry has been shaken by the undoing of a man who, as recently as June this year, was described by the Financial Times as: “a boss whose remorseless focus on performance has won him global renown”. He’s even been lauded in Japan – a nation which foreigners have always found hard to break into – after rescuing Nissan from near collapse and initiating a similar corporate recovery story at Mitsubishi. The automotive sector as a whole has a reputation for poor capital allocation, disappointing shareholder return and excessive levels of remuneration But put aside the glossy headlines the sector’s…