Carlos Ghosn Re-Elected as Renault Chairman and CEO

Following the Annual General Meeting of Renault’s Board of Directors, held on April 30, 2010, Carlos Ghosn has been re-elected as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer for a four-year period, the French manufacturer revealed today.

In his speech held during the meeting, the re-elected Carlos Ghosn looked a bit at the results of 2009 and spoke about how the financial crisis affected the automotive industry in the past year.

“The automotive industry went through the worst crisis in its history in 2009. We foresaw he arrival of an economic recession. Indeed, Renault was the first automotive manufacturer, as early as July 2008, to take crisis measures. But the crisis triggered in September 2008 surprised the entire economic and political world by its intensity and suddennes,” Ghos said in his speech.

Ghosn also admitted the help received from the French government also aided Renault get through the crisis while preserving its investments for the post-crisis period.

“The financial markets have since then returned to their pre-crisis level and we recently borrowed five million euros over seven years at a rate of 6.52%. The key for Renault during the crisis was to protect our cash, in other words to not go into debt to finance our activity. This is why our unique objective was to achieve positive free cash flow for the year,” Ghosn added.

Furthermore, Pascale Sourisse (Member of the Executive Committee of Thalès, Senior VP of the Land and Joint Systems Division) and Bernard Delpit (Executive VP, CFO of La Poste group) were also appointed as directors for a four-year term.