Mr. Ghosn has been embroiled in several fights over his executive pay, attracting the ire of investors and politicians. In 2016, Emmanuel Macron, the French president, who was at the time the finance minister, pressured Renault into reducing Mr. Ghosn’s compensation.

His salary came under scrutiny again the next year, and in 2018 he agreed to a 30 percent pay cut in return for another four-year term as chief executive.

His own pay far outstripped those of his counterparts in Japan — he earned four times the pay of Toyota’s chairman in 2017 — and he was unrepentant.

How did he earn the nickname ‘Le Cost Killer’?

Mr. Ghosn joined Renault in 1996 as executive vice president overseeing manufacturing, purchasing, research and development, after 18 years at Michelin, the tire maker. Renault was reeling from a failed merger with Volvo and Mr. Ghosn slashed costs to improve margins, earning him the nickname “Le Cost Killer.” “It’s sexy,” he said of the moniker this year. “There’s blood in it, there’s meanness.”

In 1999, Renault acquired a large stake in Nissan, and Mr. Ghosn was sent to Japan to become chief operating officer. Months later, he closed five domestic factories and eliminated about 21,000 jobs, some 14 percent of the work force.

Mr. Ghosn was pilloried in the press, but the aggressive cost-cutting worked and stabilized Nissan finances.

He is seen as an innovator for how he later engineered an arrangement that allowed the two automakers to operate like a single carmaker, sharing the cost of developing new models and buying components together.