Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-MI) discusses the current state of the General Motors strike and its impact on the economy.
The United Auto Workers board voted on Saturday to bump up workers' strike pay by $25 a week and allow them to take part-time jobs and still qualify for the benefit.
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The decision comes as the UAW's nationwide strike against General Motors is a few days away from its one-month mark.
Starting on Sunday, workers who perform picket duty will get $275 a week in strike pay. Strike pay was $250 a week and was already set to rise to $275 in 2020.
"UAW members and their families are sacrificing for all of us," union president Gary Jones said in a statement. "We are all standing together for our future. This action reflects the UAW commitment and solidarity to all of our members and their families who are taking a courageous stand together to protect our middle-class way of life."
A member of the United Auto Workers walks the picket line at the General Motors Romulus Powertrain plant in Romulus, Mich., Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2019. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)
The looser standards will also apply to UAW-represented Aramark janitorial employees who work at GM facilities and walked off the job a day before autoworkers did the same.
Previously, if workers performed outside work earning more than $250 a week, they forfeited the strike pay. Those workers still qualified for specified health care benefits available through the UAW Strike and Defense Fund.
Elon Musk shared new details about SpaceX's planned Mars-capable crewed launch system, called Starship, on September 28.
SpaceX is developing and launching Starship prototypes next to Boca Chica Village, a small neighborhood of retiree-age residents in South Texas.
Citing concerns about safety and disruptions, the rocket company recently offered to buy out everyone's homes in the area. But most residents initially balked at the deal.
While he was in town for his highly anticipated talk, Musk, the founder and CEO of SpaceX, met privately with some of the residents.
Villagers who attended the meeting described it as "awkward," "tense," and "heated," but ultimately productive in that they felt Musk — and SpaceX — listened to their complaints.
Hours after fans cheered him on-stage in South Texas, Elon Musk walked into a morass: a private meeting with perturbed locals whose properties that SpaceX, the rocket company Musk founded, had recently offered to buy out.
Residents say Musk attentively listened to their concerns and squashed some of their fears about the buyout process. But they described their roughly half-hour encounter with the tech mogul as "awkward," "tense," "heated," "confused," and "exhausting" — though it ended with handshakes, selfies, and some sense of progress.
Musk heard out his tough audience just before midnight on Saturday, September 28, during a visit to Boca Chica. The remote strip of land is located at the southeastern tip of the state, and it's where SpaceX is building a private launch site and spaceport.
But it's also where about 20 retiree-age residents live in the formerly sleepy residential neighborhood of Boca Chica Village, some of them for decades.
"We weren't playing nice with him. We made it clear we were not happy," said one resident to Business Insider. The person attended the private meeting but asked not to be named.
Why Musk met with villagers in southeastern Texas
A prototype of SpaceX's Starship, called Mk 1, rocket is seen at the company's South Texas launch facility in Boca Chica on September 28, 2019. Future versions of Starship are designed to be massive enough to take people to the moon, Mars, and beyond.
Loren Elliott/Getty Images
Musk's main task for the trip was delivering a highly anticipated update on SpaceX's plans for a next-generation rocket system, called Starship.
"The critical breakthrough that's needed for us to become a space-faring civilization is to make space travel like air travel," Musk said during his presentation while standing before a 16-story steel prototype.
Critical to making such a breakthrough, though, is room to safely build, test, and launch such Starship prototypes — vehicles which Musk has said last year might explode (though this is a risky reality of any rocket-test program). SpaceX has mostly used Boca Chica for this work, and Musk's presentation, which featured a new Starship launch visualization showing off big plans for the coastal site, underscored the company's hopes for its nascent spaceport.
"I think it's definitely possible that the first crewed mission on Starship could leave from Boca [Chica]," Musk said.
However, SpaceX has set up its rocket skunkworks close to residents' homes. The company built its launch pad just 1 1/2 miles from properties on the eastern edge of the community — twice as close as NASA permitted spectators to get to its space shuttles in Florida.
An overview of the Boca Chica area in south Texas circa 2017.
Google Earth
"[I]t has become clear that expansion of spaceflight activities as well as compliance with Federal Aviation Administration and other public safety regulations will make it increasingly more challenging to minimize disruption to residents of the Village," the company's cover letter said.
A prototype of SpaceX's Starship vehicle is pictured behind a home in Boca Chica Village, Texas, on September 28, 2019. SpaceX is attempting to buy out the residents of this community in order to expand spaceflight activities.
Loren Elliott/Getty ImagesBut SpaceX's seemingly generous pitch — three times an appraised value for each home — alarmed many if not most residents.
Some told Business Insider that they planned to permanently retire in the area and weren't interested in moving.
Nearly everyone had concerns about the offer's base appraisals, claiming they were abnormally low, and thus even a three-fold offer wouldn't come close to paying for a comparable coastal home in South Texas. (Some residents described the appraisals as "lowball" and "drive-by," since they did not evaluate the interior of homes.
Residents also told Business Insider that property comparisons, which were used to inform value, relied on properties that SpaceX purchased under duress, as well as suburban homes in Brownsville that didn't compare to their bucolic coastal setting.)
Some who wanted to stay said they feared a eminent domain process led by Cameron County, in which Boca Chica is based, may eventually force them out to make way for SpaceX's out-of-this-world ambitions.
With tensions peaking and Musk in town, SpaceX decided to put their CEO and a cadre of residents into a room to work things out.
SpaceX stopped one resident from trying to record the meeting. But according to interviews with five people who were in the room, here's what happened.
Residents said at first they 'felt like we'd been set up'
Elon Musk unveiled the 164-foot-tall Starship Mark 1 prototype in Boca Chica, Texas, on September 28, 2019.
SpaceX/YouTube
Days before Musk's Starship presentation, SpaceX invited village residents to come. Around 10 people RSVP'd, and SpaceX picked them up with a shuttle. Helping corral and greet everyone was a senior legal counsel for the company from Washington, DC, as well as a government and business-affairs liaison who worked on-site in Boca Chica.
The last shuttle drove into SpaceX's work yard compound shortly before 8 p.m., where workers had finished assembling a 16-story prototype of Starship's spaceship the day before. Residents say their handlers directed them to a sandbagged area just a few yards to the left of a small riser, which Musk stepped onto and spoke for about 40 minutes.
Immediately after he walked off-stage, SpaceX cued the residents to head to the shuttle, which they expected to drop them off at their homes less than a mile away. But once everyone had boarded, SpaceX invited the residents to join them at Stargate: a two-story technology park funded by the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley facility (which SpaceX uses as a launch control center).
"They turned around and said, 'Well, we're going to take you over here to the Stargate, upstairs, and we're going to have a special guest come meet you there,'" said Patricia Mitchell, who's owned a home in the village since 2005 with her husband, Walter.
SpaceX workers rush to and from UTRGV's Stargate facility to a launchpad during tests.
Dave Mosher/Business InsiderThey arrived to a spread of wine, beer, cookies, chips, and other snacks. The group got comfortable on couches, chairs, and stools awaiting their "special guest," whom they could only presume was Musk.
As the residents were settling in at Stargate, Musk returned to the stage at SpaceX's work yard to take questions from media. Christian Davenport of The Washington Post asked about SpaceX's long-term plans for the Boca Chica site.
"It will definitely get fancier than it currently is. The reason it's not fancier is because it would have taken too long to build the buildings," Musk said. "I think it will be a lot more buildings and a lot more stuff. Way more stuff than is currently here."
An illustration of SpaceX's planned 39-story-tall Starship rocket system at a launch site in Boca Chica, Texas.
SpaceX/YouTube
Later on, Jeff Foust of Space News asked about the future of residents in light of the FAA's apparent safety concerns.
"We're going to make sure that the risks to the public is extremely, vanishingly small. Almost nothing, basically," Musk said. "I don't see any fundamental obstacles. We are working with the residents of Boca Chica Village because we think oh, it's time, it's going to be quite disruptive to their — to living in Boca Chica Village. Because it'll end up needing to get cleared for safety a lot of times."
He added: "I think the actual danger to Boca Chica Village is low but is not tiny. So therefore we want super-tiny risk. Probably over time, [it's] better to buy out the villagers. And we've made an offer to that effect."
Most residents in the room at Stargate didn't learn about the Q&A or Musk's comments — the clearest yet from the company regarding the villagers' futures — until just before 11 p.m.
"We would have rather been down there or streaming. We just weren't savvy enough," said Maria Pointer, who was there with her husband, Ray.
"Everybody felt like we'd been set up," Walter Mitchell said. "We had questions we wanted to ask right there and have media exposure."
As some residents in the room played back streaming video of the Q&A session, agitated at having missed the remarks — and at being in their second hour of waiting for Musk — SpaceX's senior legal counsel addressed the room. She announced that Musk would arrive in about 15 to 20 minutes, noting that anyone who needed to leave could be driven home. She also opened the floor to concerns or questions to pass along.
"She invited a dialogue at that time," one resident said of the moment. "And suddenly everyone wants to unload on her."
Residents began heatedly questioning the "non-negotiable" wording in their buyout offers. They also brought up what some described to Business Insider as an "aggressive" two-week deadline to accept the deal, as well as what seemingly everyone felt was an undervaluation of their properties.
"We all felt that deadline, and three times, and 'not negotiable' — we felt that was a threat," Walter Mitchell said.
As the complaints petered out, a few residents left. One person forgot her pain medication, and her husband followed her out. Another left from exhaustion. Silence came over the room just before Musk walked in, which was sometime around 11:20 p.m.
'Nobody knew how to talk to this guy'
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk gives an update on the next-generation Starship spacecraft at the company's Texas launch facility on September 28, 2019 in Boca Chica near Brownsville, Texas.
Loren Elliott/Getty ImagesMusk arrived with an entourage of about five or six people, and immediately walked up to the residents, most of whom were sitting in a small semicircle of chairs and a couch. Everyone stood up, and Musk shook their hands, then he started speaking about why SpaceX picked Boca Chica to be the company's private spaceport.
"He talked about the regulations in Florida and why it was better for them to be here rather than in Florida, because things could get done a bit faster," Mr. Pointer said.
After a few minutes of opening remarks, Musk paused and there was a brief pause.
"It was pretty awkward. Nobody knew how to talk to this guy," Mrs. Pointer said. "You could tell people were feeling excited or flattered."
But Mr. Pointer apparently broke the silence. In an interview with Business Insider, he said he wasted little time expressing to Musk how he thought the appraisals and SpaceX's buyout offer process generally was unfair.
"I said I thought it was unconscionable that we were having to see ourselves — in so many words — dispossessed with a short-notice letter and the sword of Damocles over our heads concerning eminent domain. Those aren't my exact words, but that's certainly what I wanted to get out," Mr. Pointer said. "And then the Mitchells chimed in with their feelings about that as well — similar feelings — and then everyone started going at it."
The Mitchells explained how the offer they received for their property, which the couple planned to pass down to their children, wouldn't buy them a somewhat comparable setup in nearby South Padre Island, the nearest beachside real-estate market (though a much hotter one as a popular tourist destination).
"He was very polite and listened to what we had to say on that matter," Mr. Pointer said. "He just absorbed it and waited for the next blow."
When someone brought up the "non-negotiable" issue with the buyout offer letter, Musk chimed in with an edit.
"He goes, 'It's negotiable.' And everyone goes, 'It is negotiable?'" Mrs. Pointer said. "It surprised us and floored us."
While the three-fold number was not negotiable to be fair to everyone, Musk apparently explained, SpaceX would consider new appraisals that addressed residents' concerns. Shortly after that, two residents said they asked about eminent domain and whether or not those who chose to stay would eventually be forced out for reasons of safety or convenience.
"He said that he didn't want to do that, that's not what he wanted to do," Mr. Pointer said. "But that's not an answer to the question."
Two other residents allegedly said that they "didn't mind" SpaceX's presence and inquired about staying, according to others in the room. (One of residents previously described himself to Business Insider as "the biggest SpaceX fan in Texas," so much so that he moved to Boca Chica in 2015 to retire amid the company's launch site.)
Residents brought up a community meeting SpaceX held in 2015, not too long after the company had broken ground on its launch site. According to residents, officials allegedly said the company would — during temporary launch evacuations under a previous (and now-abandoned) plan — house residents in hotels in Brownsville, about 20 miles west of Boca Chica.
Walter Mitchell made himself clear: "There are people here that want to keep their property," Mitchell said he told Musk. "I said, 'You guys said in that meeting that you would take us and put us in hotels.' I said, 'Can that work? And they can keep their property?'"
"Well, if they don't mind frequent shuttles to a hotel frequently, we could probably do that," Musk responded according to Mitchell.
Residents also brought up other grievances and needs: a request for soundproof windows, a more courteous and helpful on-site contact with the company, and more transparency from the company about its activities.
Free Teslas and selfies
After airing their complaints and feeling heard by Musk, residents told Business Insider the "heated" and "exhausting" mood of the room began to change. That shift appears to have happened when the Mitchells cracked a joke: Could Musk throw a free Tesla electric car into everyone's buyout offer?
"We started laughing, almost all of us," a resident said, though Musk then explained that even as CEO he is required to buy his own vehicles from the company.
From there, residents said the previously "heated" conversation shuffled between a mix of joking and technical explanations. The SpaceX fan struck up a conversation about metals used in Starship. Musk apparently also described a long-term plan to move away from land-based launch pads and instead use offshore platforms near Boca Chica Beach to fly Starship with less risk to the ground.
"He mentioned that they have to take off right offshore, but they have to land somewhere, right? And you can't do that on land in the middle of Paris, I think he said," Mrs. Pointer recalled. "So you have to have offshore facilities everywhere."
As the conversation loosened up a bit more, an aide called an end to the meeting.
"He shook everyone's hand, and at the end of it, everyone took selfies," Mr. Pointer said of Musk (though he noted that he himself did not).
'I don't think we were supposed to live next to a rocket ship yard'
Maria Pointer looks on from her front yard in Boca Chica, Texas, as SpaceX workers assemble a prototype of a spaceship called Starship Mark 1 next door on September 27, 2019.
Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Residents returned home after midnight and began to soak in what had transpired.
"I don't feel like I'm on the dark side of the moon as much as I was before," Mrs. Pointer said. "I feel like they are seriously learning where all the fault lines were, where all the gaps were, where things were just falling through because they move so fast, and we don't move that fast."
Residents say SpaceX has not only extended its buyout offer deadlines, but also dispatched an appraiser to more fully evaluate their homes and consider properties in coastal areas. If those assessments come back with a more fair valuation, multiple residents who initially said they'd decline the deal told Business Insider they would reconsider selling to SpaceX.
But some residents say they still feel doubtful and pained about their futures. For instance, the Pointers have invested years of work into their Boca Chica property to make it a customized and comfortable retirement homestead, not just a winter home or Airbnb (as some residents use their properties).
"I appreciate where he's going. I understand the Mars thing — I got it — and I'm happy with everyone going forward with that. I think that's an important thing to do; he's doing a good thing, and that's fine," Mr. Pointer said. "But as far as I'm concerned — for me? — he's ruining my life and my situation out here. That being said, I just have to move on under the circumstances."
Mrs. Pointer later added: "I just don't think this is our life. I don't think we were supposed to live next to a rocket ship yard."
SpaceX did not return multiple requests comment for this story ahead of its publication.
“Don’t rely on Social Security”: because inflation adjustments are punitively low, and benefits become more inadequate as you age.
The Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) Trust Fund – does not include the Disability Insurance (DI) Trust Fund – which closed the fiscal year 2019 at the end of September with a balance of $2.80 trillion, according to figures released by the Social Security Administration. This balance was up by $3 billion from September last year, but was down $16 billion from September 2017.
The balance tends to hit annual peaks in June. The all-time peak was in June 2017, at $2.846 trillion. In June 2018, the balance was down by $13 billion. In June 2019, the balance, at $2.834 trillion, was up $1 billion from a year earlier, but was still down $12 billion from the peak in June 2017. You get the drift: 2017 was a record year, 2018 was an alarming down-year, and 2019 has reversed the down-trend, but not by much:
The Social Security Trust Fund is benefiting from the increase of workers – particularly millennials, the largest generation ever – and from rising wages that trigger higher Social Security deductions. And the date when the trust fund is depleted keeps getting moved out further, currently estimated to occur in 2034.
Depletion of the Trust Fund doesn’t mean that Social Security will collapse or whatever. It means either that workers will have to pay in a little more, or benefits will get cut, or a little of both. Social Security has been fixed before. Raising the maximum amount of earning subject to Social Security tax would be one way of doing it.
Over 63 million retirees are drawing Social Security benefits (in addition, 8 million people are drawing SSI disability benefits).
Back when I was a senior in high school, the dad of my sweetheart told me that Social Security was a “scam” and that it wouldn’t be around for him to use when he’d retire. He was a CPA and had his own business, an accounting and tax firm. He ended up retiring and collecting Social Security, which was still around. And a few years ago, he passed away, and his wife began collecting survivor benefits. Social security, which has been around for 84 years, has outlived him, and it’s going to outlive me too.
But he gave me a piece of wise and correct advice – for the wrong reason: “Don’t rely on Social Security.” It’s tough to live off Social Security benefits, and it gets much tougher as you get older, as we’ll see in a moment.
Of the SS Trust Fund’s assets, almost all, $2.79 trillion, were invested in in long-term US Treasury bonds at the end of September, with a weighted average maturity of 7.8 years. The remaining $12 billion (less than half of 1% of the total) were invested in short-term “certificates of indebtedness,” similar to Treasury bills.
US Treasury securities are considered among the most conservative assets. The fund’s investment in Treasuries is very similar to a bond fund’s or a regular pension fund’s investment in Treasuries. The funds receive interest payments and are paid face value by the Treasury Department when the security matures.
But there is one difference: Bond funds, pension funds, and other investors buy “marketable” Treasury securities that can be traded in the bond market. The SS Trust Fund buys nonmarketable Treasuries that cannot be traded, which has an advantage: Since they cannot be traded, their value doesn’t change on a daily basis. The Trust Fund accounts for them at face value, and face value is what the Trust Fund gets paid when the securities mature.
In September, the weighted average interest rate of the securities in the Trust Fund fell to 2.73%, the lowest in my lifetime. The average annual interest rate for each year has been declining relentlessly since 2009, dropping from 4.8% in 2009 to 2.8% in the fiscal year 2019:
This means that despite rising balances in the SS Trust Fund, interest income has plunged. Trust Fund balances rose 24% from 2009 through 2019. But interest income fell 28% over the same period, from about $108 billion in 2009 to $78 billion in 2019. The chart below shows average weighted annual interest income (declining red line, left scale) versus Trust Fund balances (right column):
This decline of interest income speeds up the deterioration of the Trust Fund. At current Trust Fund levels, each decline of 1 percentage point of the average annual interest rate slashes the Fund’s interest income by $28 billion a year.
And interest income will fall further as securities that were acquired years ago at higher interest rates are replaced with securities bearing much lower interest rates.
Punitively low Cost of Living (COLA) adjustments.
Benefits in 2020 will increase by just 1.6% for the year, starting in January 2020, the Social Security Administration announced on Thursday.
Social Security benefits are adjusted for inflation based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ inflation measure for “urban wage earners and clerical workers” (CPI-W). The fundamental problem is that CPI does not measure changes in the costs of living. It measures changes in prices of the same thing or service at the same quality over time. And when quality of goods (such as electronics or car) or service (such as housing) improves, the BLS removes the cost of these improvements form the index.
In other words, CPI only measures the loss of purchasing power of the dollar, and purposefully does not measure the costs of quality improvements.
This produces a situation where over the past 20 years, the CPI for new vehicles has been flat, even as actual retail prices have soared, as the cars have gotten a lot better, such as going from two air bags to 10 air bags, and from a 4-speed automatic transmission to an 8-speed automatic transmission, etc. Here is my detailed discussion on these “hedonic quality adjustments” for new vehicles and how they relate to CPI.
But it is impossible today to buy these products or services without the quality improvements, and therefore retirees have to pay more even if they don’t want those quality improvements.
The 1.6% increase in benefits doesn’t include the increases in prices due to quality improvements. It just compensates for the loss of purchasing power of the dollar (price changes of the same thing at the same quality). That’s one massive issue with the COLA adjustments.
Another massive issue with the COLA adjustments is that the basket of goods and services used by an elderly person is different from the goods and services used by the average urban worker. For example, the average elderly person has much greater healthcare needs than the average worker. And healthcare expenses have far outrun the Consumer Price Index.
The inadequate COLAs are transpiring every year, year-after-year, and for retirees who’re dependent on Social Security, which is already tough to live on at the beginning, face a gradual and pernicious reduction of the standard of living they’re able to pay for.
This is why my high school sweetheart’s dad was right, but for the wrong reason, and yes, dear millennials, that’s for you: Don’t rely on Social Security, not because it won’t be there for you (it will be), but because the COLAs are purposefully insufficient once you draw benefits, and the benefits will become more and more inadequate as you age.
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U.S. stock benchmarks Friday morning were on pace to gain for a third session in a row — which would represent the longest string of gains in October — as investors drew optimism from President Donald Trump’s offer to meet China’s top trade negotiator later in the day, lifting hopes for progress for some form of resolution in the longstanding tariff conflict.
How did the benchmarks perform?
Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average
YMZ19, +0.89%
rose 251 points, or 0.9%, to 26,734, those for the S&P 500 index
ESZ19, +0.88%
advanced 27.15 points, or 0.9%, to reach 2,968, while Nasdaq-100 futures
NQZ19, +1.02%
added 89 points, or 1.2%, to 7,849.50.
On Thursday, the Dow
DJIA, +0.57%
rose 150.66 points, or 0.6%, to 26,496.67. The S&P 500 index
SPX, +0.64%
climbed 0.6%, or 18.73 points, to 2,938.13. The Nasdaq Composite Index
COMP, +0.60%
picked up 47.04 points, or 0.6%, to finish at 7,950.78.
For the week, however, the Dow is poised to shed 0.3%, while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq are on pace to post 0.5% and 0.4% declines, respectively, as of Thursday’s close.
What drove the stock market?
President Donald Trump said the first day of talks went “really well” and announced that he would be meet China’s Vice Premier Liu He later Friday. The Wall Street Journal reported that terms for a possible tentative deal could include China offering more agriculture purchases, a joint pact to deter Beijing from devaluing its currency, and, on the U.S. side, suspending planned tariffs and relaxing export bans against blacklisted Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies Co.
“This whole optimism around the first day of the talks may have revived hopes that the week will end with an interim trade deal between the world’s two largest economies, something that could also take additional tariffs off the table,” wrote Charalambos Pissouros, senior market analyst at brokerage JFD Group, in a daily research note. “If today’s headlines continue to come in favor of such an outcome, risk assets, like equities,” he said.
Looking ahead, investors are focused on a report import and export prices for September due at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time, and a reading on consumer sentiment due at 10 a.m.
Investors also will watch for comments from Boston Federal Reserve President Eric Rosengren — one of three dissenters in the Fed’s last decision — set to speak at the American Economic Challenges Symposium in Madison, Wis., at 1:15 p.m., while Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan, is expected to moderate a panel in San Francisco at 3 p.m. Kaplan isn’t a voting member of the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee.
How did other assets trade?
The yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note
TMUBMUSD10Y, +0.94%
climbed to 1.671%, compared with 1.649% on Thursday.
Gold futures held below the psychologically significant level at $1,500. December gold
GCZ19, -0.08%
was most recently down 0.1% at $1,499.30 an ounce.
In Asia overnight Friday, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index
HSI, +2.34%
surged 2.3% to 26,308.44, the China CSI 300
000300, +0.96%
rose 1% to reach 3,911.73, and Japan’s Nikkei 225
NIK, +1.15%
gained 1.2% to 21,798.87. The Stoxx Europe 600
SXXP, +1.31%,
meanwhile, advanced 1.4% to 387.95. And the FTSE 100
UKX, +0.43%
gained 0.3% to 7,205.83, even as the pound jumped 0.3% against to the dollar, amid renewed Brexit optimism.
Renault’s board on Friday fired its chief executive, Thierry Bolloré, just days after Nissan shook up its leadership, as the two automakers in a much-vaunted alliance struggled to regain their footing nearly a year after the ouster of their former chairman, Carlos Ghosn.
The French automaker named its chief financial officer, Clotilde Delbos, as the interim chief executive. Mr. Bolloré, a former executive who served under Mr. Ghosn, became chief executive after Mr. Ghosn’s arrest on charges of financial wrongdoing last year.
Renault and Nissan are attempting to turn a page on the Ghosn era by shedding executives who have complicated efforts to reboot the world’s largest auto alliance since his arrest.
On Tuesday, Nissan appointed a new leader following the ouster of longtime chief executive Hiroto Saikawa, a protégé of Mr. Ghosn’s.
Friday’s surprise maneuver paves the way for Renault to look for a new chief to work closely with Nissan and Renault’s chairman, Jean-Dominique Senard, who took the helm of the French automaker in January.
In a Thursday interview with a French financial newspaper, Les Échos, Mr. Bolloré said he was the target of a “very disturbing coup” and that the only thing he had done wrong was to be promoted by Mr. Ghosn, who resigned under pressure from Renault. The French carmaker has also alerted prosecutors in France to investigate possible irregularities with the funding of Mr. Ghosn’s wedding at Versailles in 2016.
New leadership at the head of both auto giants could open a new chapter in the partnership, which has been plagued by festering relations, governance problems, corporate intrigue and an increasingly flagging financial performance since Mr. Ghosn was toppled last November as head of the alliance, which also includes Mitsubishi Motors of Japan.
Nissan declined to comment on the changes at Renault.
