Goodbye Ghosn: Coronavirus forces Nissan to ditch brash doctrine

TOKYO -- A total of 20,000 people who work for Nissan Motor in Europe and the U.S. are being temporarily laid off, as demand for its cars evaporates under the coronavirus pandemic.

The mass layoffs are the first such cuts since the global financial crisis of 2008. Back then, the hard-nosed CEO Carlos Ghosn pulled the Japanese carmaker out of the doldrums by aggressively expanding business in emerging markets.