Renault, the French carmaker, has created a new position of chief operating officer for Patrick Pelata, who will become the official number two to Carlos Ghosn, the president and chief executive.

The move will increase speculation that Mr Ghosn is setting up a succession plan ahead of his eventual retirement from the group, by appointing one of his closest lieutenants.

Mr Pelata is a former head of strategy, who had been put in charge of European operations only a few weeks ago and who worked with Mr Ghosn at Nissan in Japan and Europe.

The Frenchman was a key figure during the acquisition of a large minority stake in AvtoVAZ of Russia last year. “Through his significant knowledge of Renault, through the quality of our relationship, and through his involvement in Renault Commitment 2009, he has the right experience and all my confidence to succeed in this new position,” Mr Ghosn said in a statement.

A spokeswoman for the car company said that Mr Pelata would be in charge of the operational business and Mr Ghosn of strategy, budget, mergers and acquisitions and alliances.

The appointment, which is said to have been in the planning for a long time, mirrors the structure at Nissan where Toshiyuki Shinga is chief operating officer, reporting to Mr Ghosn.

The 53-year-old executive holds engineering degrees from French schools and joined Renault in 1984 as a manager at the Flins plant. In 1999 he joined Nissan in Tokyo, before returning to Renault in 2005.

Earlier this month Mr Pelata said Renault could no longer keep a sales target for this year because of the market crisis.

“Obviously we’re going now to look at market share instead of total volumes,” Mr Pelata said.

In an interview with The Sunday Times this summer, Mr Ghosn, 54, dismissed questions about when he would step down or that he was keen to enter politics. He said that when he left he would like to be a professor of strategy and change management at a university. "It's everything I have been doing all my life and making the kids benefit from it would be fun," he said.

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