Daring Deal by French CEO Sets Japan’s Takeda on Global Path

Back in 2013, Christophe Weber was offered a job as Takeda Pharmaceutical Co.’s chief operating officer, making him essentially the CEO-in-waiting and placing him on track to become the first foreigner to run the company since its founding in 1781. The French executive immediately reached out to auto industry turnaround artist Carlos Ghosn, a fellow Frenchman who enjoyed godlike status in Japan for saving Nissan Motor Co. They met in Paris, and Ghosn gave Weber a hint of what life would be like as a foreign executive in Japan.

Ghosn, who also has Brazilian and Lebanese citizenship, today sits in a Tokyo jail cell and faces charges for allegedly understating his compensation to the Japanese government by about $80 million. He’s also been stripped of his chairmanship at Nissan. Weber, meanwhile, has just pulled off a daring—and debt-fueled— $62 billion takeover of Shire Plc, a biopharmaceutical company headquartered in Ireland that’s focused on treatments for rare diseases. The marriage will create the world’s ninth-biggest drugmaker by sales.