Is the Renault-Nissan Alliance Collapsing?

Several joint business operations shared by Renault SA and Nissan Motor Co. during their 20-year-old alliance are being shut down, sources tell the Financial Times.

The partnership’s powerful “CEO office” once led by Carlos Ghosn is being disbanded, the sources say. They also report that staffs that once coordinated sales, marketing, communications and light commercial vehicles operations between the companies are shrinking.

“People have nothing to do,” one sources tells FT. The newspaper says some joint operations have received no new assignments in months. The alliance and its members declined to comment.

The dismantling process FT describes is reversing Ghosn’s accelerated efforts last year to further integrate alliance operations. His target was to find €10 billion ($11.2 billion) in joint synergies by 2022 and bind the participating companies into an “irreversible” alliance.

Ghosn exercised extraordinary control over the partnership, serving simultaneously as chairman of Renault, Nissan, Nissan’s Mitsubishi Motors affiliate and the alliance itself.

But with Ghosn now awaiting trial in Japan on multiple charges of financial wrongdoing, that glue—along with mutual trust among the partners—is gone, FT says.