SEPTEMBER 5, 2007

Who is Bernard Rey?

Bernard Rey, the new chairman of Renault F1, is a Renault man through and through, having joined the company in 1969, at the age of 23. He has spent much of his career in purchasing and in 1998 was named as International Purchasing Director by the then chairman Louis Schweitzer.

Bernard Rey, the new chairman of Renault F1, is a Renault man through and through, having joined the company in 1969, at the age of 23. He has spent much of his career in purchasing and in 1998 was named as International Purchasing Director by the then chairman Louis Schweitzer. A year later he was one of the executives who went with Carlos Ghosn to sort out Nissan, after Renault bought 36.8% of the Japanese firm. His work led to huge cuts in Nissan's purchasing costs and in three years these had been slashed by 20%. In 2004 he was named a senior vice president of Nissan and put in charge of Nissan's global motorsports operations. Earlier this year he was brought back to Paris and appointed as senior vice president in charge of Ghosn's Paris office and became one of the 23 members of the Renault Management Committee, which oversees all of the company's activities.

At 61 he is now in the twilight of his career (as the retirement age in France's private sector is 65) but he is a safe pair of hands for Ghosn and a man who knows how to keep his hands firmly on the purse strings.

Alain Dassas, the current Renault F1 president, has been appointed to the role of chief financial officer of Nissan, his job being to reverse the current slump in Nissan sales.