With Ghosn's arrest for financial misconduct, cracks appear in car alliance

Even the probe into Ghosn's alleged misconduct reveals the fault lines, with the allegations against Ghosn sparked by a whistleblower investigation at Nissan

The shock news of Carlos Ghosn’s arrest in Japan was barely a few hours old when cracks began to appear in the automotive alliance that the globe-trotting executive had skillfully held together for almost two decades.

At a late-evening press conference in Tokyo, Nissan Motor Co. Chief Executive Officer Hiroto Saikawa -- a former Ghosn confidant -- painted a dark picture of an executive with too much power and too little oversight, which he said might have contributed to the alleged financial misconduct

Over in France, where the state owns 15 percent of Renault, officials were quick to demand continuity