Carlos Ghosn is reputedly one of the best-paid executives in Japan. Even so, along with other eight Nissan executives, Ghosn is to announce next week that he will forfeit his annual director’s bonus—that’s according to a story running in the Japanese press.

Even though Ghosn’s totally transformed Nissan into a major profit machine since arriving in 1999, last year was a rough one for the company, and results for the 12-month period to March 31, 2007 came in below expectations.

Nissan’s group profit fell 11.1 percent to $3.94 billion, and global sales dipped 2.4 percent to 3.48 million units. The automaker also put its ‘Nissan Value Up’ commitments back a year, to March 2008, the first time in Ghosn’s tenure the graph has sloped down, not up.

Of course, quite a few companies would love to have such ‘problems’ and profit numbers like Nissan, but for Ghosn, it isn’t good enough, so no bonuses.

How much are we talking about? For the 2005-06 business year, ¥390 million (some $3.2 million) was paid to seven directors, so you do the math…