Responsabilité sociale des entreprises

Hier, le plus grand d’investissement au monde (BlackRock) a posté sur son site Internet son rapport sur son approche en matière de durabilité : « Our approach to sustainability ».

Extrait :

This past January, BlackRock wrote to clients about how we are making sustainability central to the way we invest, manage risk, and execute our stewardship responsibilities……Our efforts around sustainability, as with all our investment stewardship activities, seek to promote governance practices that help create long-term shareholder value for our clients, the vast majority of whom are investing for long-term goals such as retirement. This reflects our approach to sustainability across BlackRock’s investment processes, in which we use Environmental, Social, and Governance factors in order to provide clients with better risk-adjusted returns, in keeping with both our fiduciary duty and the range of regulatory requirements around the world. As a result, we have a responsibility to our clients to make sure companies are adequately managing and disclosing sustainability-related risks, and to hold them accountable if they are not.

(…) While this report focuses on climate-related issues, our investment stewardship approach to sustainability is much broader. It encompasses other environmental issues, such as sustainable practices in agribusiness. Our stewardship also includes topics that have been central to many companies’ license to operate, particularly over the past few months, such as human capital management and diversity and inclusion. The COVID-19 crisis, and more recently the protests surrounding racial injustice in the United States and elsewhere, have underscored the importance of these issues and a company’s commitment to serving all of its stakeholders.

(…) In January, we asked companies to publish disclosure aligned with the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) standards, which includes disclosing the racial and ethnic profile of their U.S. workforce. In the second half of 2020, as we assess the impact of companies’ response to COVID-19 and associated issues of racial equality, we will be refreshing our expectations for human capital management and how companies pursue sustainable business practices that support their license to operate more broadly. We also will continue to emphasize the importance of diversity in the board room and will consider race, ethnicity, and gender as we review a company’s directors.

À la prochaine…

Dans ReadClear Markets, Bernard Sharfman critique la dernière position prise par BlackRock : « Does BlackRock’s Shareholder Activism Breach Its Fiduciary Duties? ».

Extrait :

In Larry Fink’s (CEO of BlackRock) most recent letter to CEOs, A Fundamental Reshaping of Finance, Fink lays out a strategy for how BlackRock will use its considerable amount of delegated shareholder voting power to dictate its own vision of what a public company’s (a company traded on a U.S. stock exchange or over-the-counter) stakeholder relationships should be. These relationships represent the management of an enormous number of entities and individuals, entailing much complexity. That is why their management is placed in the hands of those who have the knowledge and expertise to manage them: the company’s management team. In this writing, I argue that BlackRock’s implementation of a strategy of interfering with a public company’s stakeholder relationships (“strategy”) is a form of shareholder activism that may breach the fiduciary duties owed to its investors.

As a means to implement its strategy, a strategy that allegedly is meant “to promote long-term value” for its investors, BlackRock will be requiring each public company that it invests in—virtually all public companies—to disclose data on “how each company serves its full set of stakeholders.” Moreover, noncompliance will not be tolerated. According to Fink, “we will be increasingly disposed to vote againstmanagement and board directors when companies are not making sufficient progress on sustainability-related disclosures and the business practices and plans underlying them.” Based on first-quarter 2020 data, this threat appears to be playing out in reality.

(…)

But what if BlackRock’s strategy is not really motivated by a desire to enhance shareholder value but to attract the investment funds held by millennials and, at least while they are young, their perceived preference for less financial returns and more social activism? Millennials will increasingly be the ones holding most of the wealth in the U.S., making it essential for advisers like BlackRock to start catering to their needs and developing their loyalty now, not later. This is an argument recently made by corporate governance scholarsMichal Barzuza, Quinn Curtis, and David Webber.

Or what if BlackRock’s strategy is used to appease shareholder activists who attack BlackRock’s management? For example, in November 2019, Boston Trust Walden and Mercy Investment Services submitted a shareholder proposal to BlackRock demanding that it provide a review explaining why its climate-change rhetoric does not correspond with how it actually votes at shareholder meetings. The proposal was reportedly withdrawn after BlackRock agreed to give increased consideration to shareholder proposals on climate change and join Climate Action 100, an investor group that targets its shareholder activism at fossil fuel producers and greenhouse gas emitters.

So while BlackRock’s shareholder activism may be a good marketing strategy, helping it to differentiate itself from its competitors, as well as a means to stave off the disruptive effects of shareholder activism at its own annual meetings, it seriously puts into doubt BlackRock’s sincerity and ability to look out only for its beneficial investors and therefore may violate the duty of loyalty that it owes to its current, and still very much alive, baby-boomer and Gen-X investors.

À la prochaine…

Bonsoir à toutes et à tous, Larry Fink se fait encore entendre : « Le plus gros actionnaire au monde appelle les entreprises à définir leur « raison d’être » » (Les Echos, janvier 2019)…. pour le plus grand bien de la RSE. Cette fois, c’est la raison d’être que le PDG de BlackRock souhaite pousser !

Extrait :

Depuis des années, Larry Fink, le patron de BlackRock, le plus gros actionnaire de la planète, demande aux entreprises de penser à long terme. En 2018, il avait déjà appelé les patrons à oeuvrer pour le bien commun. Une révolution. Cette année, ce financier, soutien fidèle du parti démocrate, va plus loin. Il exhorte les entreprises dans lesquelles il investit à définir leur « raison d’être » .

À la prochaine…

Dans The New York Times, vous trouverez la lettre annuelle de BlackRock : « BlackRock: Focus on Society and Profits » (16 janvier 2018).

Extraits :

the public expectations of your company have never been greater. Society is demanding that companies, both public and private, serve a social purpose. To prosper over time, every company must not only deliver financial performance, but also show how it makes a positive contribution to society. Companies must benefit all of their stakeholders, including shareholders, employees, customers, and the communities in which they operate. Without a sense of purpose, no company, either public or private, can achieve its full potential.

Furthermore, the board is essential to helping a company articulate and pursue its purpose, as well as respond to the questions that are increasingly important to its investors, its consumers, and the communities in which it operates. In the current environment, these stakeholders are demanding that companies exercise leadership on a broader range of issues. And they are right to: A company’s ability to manage environmental, social, and governance matters demonstrates the leadership and good governance that is so essential to sustainable growth, which is why we are increasingly integrating these issues into our investment process. Companies must ask themselves: What role do we play in the community? How are we managing our impact on the environment? Are we working to create a diverse workforce? Are we adapting to technological change?

À la prochaine…

Ivan Tchotourian