The restructuring of the Nissan and Renault  alliance just isn’t the legacy Carlos Ghosn had in thoughts.

The announcement on Monday that Renault will regularly scale back its stake in Nissan is a repudiation of the previous chairman’s plans to extra carefully unite an alliance the manager spent virtually 20 years constructing.

As a substitute, the businesses are selecting extra unbiased paths to navigate the technological and geographical shifts reshaping the worldwide automotive trade.

Renault is splitting into two fundamental companies, one centered on electrical autos and one other on vehicles with legacy combustion engines.

Nissan has lengthy sought higher independence since Renault saved it from monetary wreck with a well-timed money injection in 1999 and despatched in Ghosn to show the enterprise round.

The workaholic Brazilian-Lebanese govt, who spent a lot of his time jetting between the automakers’ headquarters and factories, was the glue holding collectively the alliance, which expanded in 2016 to incorporate Mitsubishi Motors.

Earlier than his shock arrest in 2018, Ghosn was aiming for a grand coalition of automotive enterprises to tackle trade leaders Toyota and Volkswagen Group, in addition to embracing electrification and self-driving.

Only a yr in the past, Renault’s market capitalization was decrease than the worth of its holding in Nissan, one signal that it was not working as supposed. However within the interim, traders have purchased into CEO Luca de Meo’s imaginative and prescient for Renault’s future, virtually doubling its market worth from a March low.

The automaking world has modified since Ghosn was arrested for monetary crimes — he denies the costs — and purged from the businesses he as soon as dominated.

Nissan, for one, is value lower than half of what it was underneath him, and the three alliance automakers have misplaced $28.5 billion mixed in market worth.

Nissan posted its largest loss in 20 years within the fiscal yr following the arrest, and it has slipped to turn into Japan’s third-largest automaker after Toyota and Honda.

Whereas Renault and Nissan benefited by utilizing their joint-purchasing energy to drive down prices for components and uncooked supplies, they by no means found out make full use of their engineering assets to construct frequent automotive platforms.

Nissan stays the larger companion within the alliance, outselling Renault. The Yokohama-based firm is making a giant, long-term guess on solid-state car batteries, an as-yet untested expertise within the mass market.

Along with Mitsubishi, Nissan can be making and promoting electrical mini autos, lining up in opposition to Chinese language producers and others pushing aggressively into the world.

The fees filed in opposition to Ghosn and former director Greg Kelly have been a distraction for Nissan, in addition to a prolonged inside probe and the previous chairman’s dramatic escape from Japan on the finish of 2019.

Negotiations to revamp the alliance have sucked up administration assets at a time when Nissan has a noticeable lack of latest fashions to attraction to automotive consumers.

Ghosn’s arrest additionally led to the exit of a number of alliance executives, most notably Jose Munoz, who’s now Hyundai Motor’s chief working officer.

Hyundai is outselling Nissan globally and has turn into the world’s third-largest automaker.

The saga additionally triggered administration turmoil at Renault that left the French firm and not using a everlasting CEO for 20 months. Thierry Bollore was appointed quickly after Ghosn’s arrest, however lasted only a yr, and was adopted by interim management till de Meo took over in mid-2020.

The Ghosn years had been additionally marked by Nissan sending a whole lot of tens of millions of euros into Renault’s coffers through dividends. The payouts halted three years in the past when Nissan went on an aggressive cost-cutting drive, a painful lack of revenue for the French automaker, and had been solely not too long ago restored at a a lot decrease stage.

Ghosn’s voluntary pay minimize in 2011 after new disclosure guidelines in Japan triggered efforts by Kelly and others to search out methods to retain and pay him after retirement, in response to testimony given throughout prison proceedings in opposition to Kelly and Nissan. That trial concluded final yr with Kelly exonerated of most prices and Nissan paying a high quality.

The previous alliance chairman asserts that he was ousted as a result of he sought to carry the businesses nearer collectively. Whereas there may be proof to again the claims, his efforts clearly backfired.

In the end, Ghosn’s visions — together with bringing Fiat into the alliance — by no means got here to cross.