When Ghosn Gets Tough

It's always satisfying to get a good deal on a used car, and they don't come much better than Renault's 1999 alliance with Nissan.

The 400 yen per share Renault spent buying a 44.4 percent stake in the company is now worth 2.5 trillion yen ($21 billion), more than three times the purchase price. At the same time, joint Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Carlos Ghosn gained control of a carmaker that now sells almost twice as many automobiles as Renault and contributes almost two-thirds of group profits.

So it's not hard to understand the sore feelings in Japan about a French government move to increase its control over Renault, and by extension Nissan. France's actions are ``unacceptable" and risk destabilizing the alliance, Nissan's usually silent union said Wednesday, according to Bloomberg News.

The impasse has played out so far with the tact of marriage negotiations between medieval royal courts. But make no mistake: The Elysee Palace is playing with fire.

Right now, Renault -- a company which was only privatized in 1996, and has often behaved like a department of the French government -- is very lucky to have Nissan as such a cooperative partner. While the French company's own annual sales volumes have stalled at about 2.7 million cars, Nissan's have jumped 58 percent since their post-financial crisis low point in 2009, and hit 5.3 million last year: