consolidated interest-bearing net automotive debt of more than $20 billion (more than 2 trillion yen), and only three of its 46 models sold in Japan were generating a profit. Reversing the company's sinking fortunes was considered nearly impossible. Ghosn's "Nissan Revival Plan", announced in October 1999, called for a return to profitability in fiscal year 2000, a profit margin in excess of 4.5% of sales by the end of fiscal year 2002, and a 50% reduction in the current level of debt by the end of fiscal year 2002. Ghosn promised to resign if these goals were not met. Ghosn's Nissan Revival Plan called for cutting 21,000 Nissan jobs (14% of total workforce), mostly in Japan; shutting five Japanese plants; reducing the number of suppliers and shareholdings; and auctioning off prized assets such as Nissan's aerospace unit. Ghosn was the fourth non-Japanese person to lead a Japanese automaker, after Mark Fields, Henry Wallace and James Miller were appointed by Ford to run Mazda in the late 1990s. In addition to cutting jobs, plants, and suppliers, Ghosn spearheaded major and dramatic structural and corporate-culture changes at Nissan. He defied Japanese business etiquette in various ways, including by eliminating seniority-based and age-based promotion, by changing lifetime employment from a guarantee to a desired goal for when the company achieved high performance, and by dismantling Nissan's keiretsu system; an interwoven web of parts suppliers with cross-holdings in Nissan. When the Nissan Revival Plan was announced, the proposed dismantling of keiretsu earned Ghosn the nickname "keiretsu killer", and The Wall Street Journal quoted a Dresdner Kleinwort Benson analyst in Tokyo as saying Ghosn might become a "target of public outrage" if Nissan threw former affiliates out of its supply chain. Ghosn changed Nissan's official company language from Japanese to English, and included executives from Europe and North America in key global strategy sessions for the first time. In the first year of the Nissan Revival Plan, Nissan's consolidated net profit after tax climbed to $2.7 billion for fiscal year 2000, from a consolidated net loss of $6.46 billion in the previous year. Twelve months into his three-year turnaround plan, Nissan had returned to profitability, and within three years it was one of the industry's most profitable auto makers, with operating margins consistently above 9%; more than twice the industry average. The goals of the Nissan Revival Plan were all reached before 31 March 2002.