2021年经济学人 卡洛斯·戈恩与日产的恩怨纠葛(1)（在线收听）

Carlos Ghosn and Nissan

卡洛斯·戈恩与日产的恩怨纠葛

Car trouble

汽车纷争

Collision Course. By Hans Greimel and William Sposato.

《阴谋始末》。作者汉斯·格雷梅尔和威廉·斯波萨托。

The main events of the scandal that brought down Carlos Ghosn,

导致卡洛斯·戈恩(Carlos Ghosn)下台的主要丑闻事件起因于乘坐公务机。

whose restless energy made other globetrotting bosses look work-shy, are appropriately book-ended by flights on corporate jets.

戈恩的充沛精力让其他满世界飞的老板们黯然失色。

The drama began with grainy television footage of Japanese prosecutors boarding the plane that delivered an unwitting Mr Ghosn to his arrest in Tokyo in November 2018.

这场闹剧的开场是一些模糊的电视画面：2018年11月的东京，日本检方登上一架飞机，突然将不知情的戈恩逮捕。

It culminated in his skipping bail on several charges of financial impropriety around a year later.

大约一年后，他因几项财务不当指控而在保释期间潜逃，由此这出闹剧达到了高潮。

Stripped of his leadership of a giant conglomerate, he was smuggled out of Japan on another private jet, this time hidden in a box.

在被剥夺一家大型企业集团的领导权后，他搭乘另一架私人飞机偷运出日本，这次是藏身于一个箱子里。

Because of that clandestine escape, “Collision Course” by Hans Greimel and William Sposato, two Tokyo-based journalists, at times reads like a spy thriller.

由于那次秘密逃亡，两位驻东京记者汉斯·格雷梅尔和威廉·斯波萨托的《阴谋始末》有时读起来像间谍惊悚小说。

But their main aim and achievement is to give the clearest account yet of the deep-rooted causes of Mr Ghosn’s predicament.

但他们的主要目标和成就是对戈恩陷入困境的深层原因给出最清晰的解释。

Underpinning the entire tale—and Mr Ghosn’s status as a corporate superstar—was Renault’s rescue in 1999 of near-bankrupt Nissan,

戈恩作为企业超级明星的地位得到巩固是在——1999年，雷诺拯救了濒临破产的日产，

an alliance, later joined by Mitsubishi, which he built into the world’s biggest carmaker.

后来三菱也加入了这个联盟，戈恩将日产打造成了世界上最大的汽车制造商。

The terms of Nissan’s bail-out gave Renault, in which the French government has a large shareholding, control of the Japanese firm,

对日产的纾困条款给予雷诺(法国政府持有其大量股份)对这家日本公司的控制权，

but Nissan got no say over Renault in return.

但作为条件，日产对雷诺的相关问题没有发言权。

The alliance stopped short of a full merger, which, in the car industry, had usually ended in disaster.

该联盟尚未实现全面合并，而在汽车行业，全面合并通常以灾难的结果告终。

This arrangement led to seething resentment at Nissan, which gradually became the bigger company and the main source of profits.

这一安排引发了日产的强烈不满，该公司逐渐发展为规模更大的公司和主要的利润来源。

Mr Ghosn kept a lid on the tensions between the two carmakers—their engineers rarely agreed on anything—through the force of his personality.

戈恩凭借他的个人性格压制了两家汽车制造商之间的紧张关系——两家的工程师很少能就某一问题达成一致。