Even though Carlos Ghosn is in jail in Japan and no longer in charge of Nissan and Mitsubishi, he still holds the chairman position at Renault. But new reports reveal that he'll be stepping down later this week.

Reuters has learned from three sources that Ghosn has agreed to resign from Renault. This stems from Renault's largest stockholder, the French government calling for a leadership change. Also, Ghosn's latest request for bail was rejected by a Tokyo court. This comes a couple days before an emergency board meeting at Renault where they will consider appointing outgoing Michelin CEO Jean-Dominique Senard as chairman, and promoting Thierry Bollore as CEO.

Renault did confirm the meeting, but a spokesman did not respond to any questions about what will take place at the meeting.

The departure of Ghosn at Renault is being seen as the first step of smoothing out the rocky relationship between it and Nissan. As we have reported previously, Renault has been questioning Nissan's rationale of removing Ghosn. Partly this is due to Nissan trying to balance out the relationship between the two companies - Renault has voting power on Nissan's board, but Nissan doesn't have any sort of voting power on Renault's board.

Source: Automotive News (Subscription Required), Reuters