engagement et activisme actionnarial Gouvernance mission et composition du conseil d'administration Normes d'encadrement Nouvelles diverses rémunération
Rémunération des dirigeants : le CA doit prendre ses responsabilités
Ivan Tchotourian 17 avril 2016
Belle réflexion offerte par le Financial Times sur le rôle que le conseil d’administration devrait assumer en matière de rémunération des dirigeants : « Boards are responsible for limiting excess pay » (Financial Times, 17 avril 2016).
Boards of directors are not appointed to rubber-stamp formulas devised by consultants, no matter what the result. If there appears to be something awry, they should be able to exercise their judgment and not be limited by employment contracts that deny them authority. BP’s remuneration committee failed this simple test and so found itself exposed to scorn.
Nothing absolves a board of its responsibility to limit the quantum of pay. Chief executives perform tough, demanding, responsible jobs and their decisions heavily affect the value of companies. But it is not obvious why some need to be paid double-digit millions to do their best when single-digit millions or less were accepted as sufficient financial rewards not so long ago.
Boards sometimes need to compete for talent, signing contracts that raise expectations and constrain their freedom to cap pay. As the tenure of CEOs has reduced, bosses want to get rich faster. Some argue that they could earn more in private equity, away from the unforgiving public spotlight.
À la prochaine…
Ivan Tchotourian
engagement et activisme actionnarial mission et composition du conseil d'administration rémunération
Volkswagen : la rémunération en baisse ?
Ivan Tchotourian 11 avril 2016
Fortune nous apprend que l’entreprise Volkswagen chercherait à diminuer les bonus (diminution de 30 % sur une base volontaire) qui devaient être versés aux dirigeants suite au scandale auquel fait face cette entreprise : « Volkswagen CEO Seeks to Cut Board Bonuses ».
Volkswagen Chief Executive Matthias Mueller will push for a significant reduction in bonuses for the carmaker’s management board on Monday, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.
The proposal being put forward at a supervisory board steering committee meeting follows criticism from one of Volkswagen’s major shareholders, the state of Lower Saxony, about intentions to pay bonuses to top managers while the company grapples with the diesel emissions crisis and prepares to cut costs elsewhere.
À la prochaine…
Ivan Tchotourian
mission et composition du conseil d'administration Nouvelles diverses
Rachat d’actions : une pratique discutable
Ivan Tchotourian 11 avril 2016
Bonjour à toutes et à tous, voici que le rachat d’actions refait surface : la saison des résultats du premier trimestre 2016 qui démarre la semaine prochaine devrait selon un article de Les affaires confirmer cette tendance d’autant que les 500 grosses entreprises américaines sont assises sur 1300 milliards de dollars américains de trésorerie (« Wall Street dorlote ses actionnaires à coup de milliards », 10 avril 2016).
Voici quelques statistiques extraits de cet article :
En 2014 et 2015, «au moins 20% des 500 entreprises composant l’indice boursier S&P ont réduit d’au moins 4% le nombre de leurs actions, et par conséquent augmenté leurs bénéfices par action d’au moins 4%», a calculé Howard Silverblatt, analyste chez S&P Dow Jones Indices.
Les 500 plus grosses entreprises cotées en Bourse aux États-Unis avaient consacré 27,5% des 500 milliards de dollars de leurs bénéfices opérationnels aux rachats d’actions en 2009, selon S&P Dow Jones.
En 2015, cette proportion a plus que doublé: sur les 885,29 milliards de dollars de bénéfices engrangés en 2015, 572,5 milliards ont été redistribués aux actionnaires sous forme de rachats d’actions, soit 64,7%, dopant les bénéfices par action de 3,22% en moyenne.
À la prochaine…
Ivan Tchotourian
engagement et activisme actionnarial mission et composition du conseil d'administration Normes d'encadrement normes de droit
Vote majoritaire : un moyen de rendre le CA plus responsable ?
Ivan Tchotourian 5 avril 2016
Un peu de lecture pour ce matin ? Je vous renvoie à cet intéressant article : Stephen Choi, New York University Jill Fisch, University of Pennsylvania and ECGI Marcel Kahan, New York University and ECGI Edward Rock, University of Pennsylvania, « Does Majority Voting Improve Board Accountability? », Law Working Paper No. 310/2016, March 2016.
Directors have traditionally been elected by a plurality of the votes cast. This means that in uncontested elections, a candidate who receives even a single vote is elected. Proponents of “shareholder democracy” have advocated a shift to a majority voting rule in which a candidate must receive a majority of the votes cast to be elected. Over the past decade, they have been successful, and the shift to majority voting has been one of the most popular and successful governance reforms. Yet critics are skeptical as to whether majority voting improves board accountability. Tellingly, directors of companies with majority voting rarely fail to receive majority approval – even more rarely than directors of companies with plurality voting. Even when such directors fail to receive majority approval, they are unlikely to be forced to leave the board. This poses a puzzle: why do firms switch to majority voting and what effect does the switch have, if any, on director behavior?
We empirically examine the adoption and impact of a majority voting rule using a sample of uncontested director elections from 2007 to 2013. We test and find partial support for four hypotheses that could explain why directors of majority voting firms so rarely fail to receive majority support: selection; deterrence/accountability; electioneering by firms; and restraint by shareholders.
Our results further suggest that the reasons for and effects of adopting majority voting may differ between early and later adopters. We find that early adopters of majority voting were more shareholder-responsive than other firms even before they adopted majority voting. These firms seem to have adopted majority voting voluntarily, and the adoption of majority voting has made little difference in their responsiveness to shareholders responsiveness going forward. By contrast, for late adopters, we find no evidence that they were more shareholder-responsive than other firms before they adopted majority voting, but strong evidence that they became more responsive after adopting majority voting.
Differences between early and late adopters can have important implications for understanding the spread of corporate governance reforms and evaluating their effects on firms. Reform advocates, rather than targeting the firms that, by their measures, are most in need of reform, instead seem to have targeted the firms that are already most responsive. They may then have used the widespread adoption of majority voting to create pressure on the nonadopting firms.
Empirical studies of the effects of governance changes thus need to be sensitive to the possibility that early adopters and late adopters of reforms differ from each other and that the reforms may have different effects on these two groups of firms.
À la prochaine…
Ivan Tchotourian
autres publications engagement et activisme actionnarial mission et composition du conseil d'administration Normes d'encadrement
Besoin d’une réforme en gouvernance : le professeur Gordon s’exprime
Ivan Tchotourian 29 mars 2016
Jeffrey N. Gordon connu pour ses écrits dans le domaine de la gouvernance d’entreprise offre une belle tribune dans le Morning Consul du 22 mars 2016. Intitulé « Shareholder Activism, the Short-Termist Red-Herring, and the Need for Corporate Governance Reform », cet écrit revient sur l’activisme des hedge funds et la concentration dont ils font l’objet.
Jeffrey Gordon demande qu’une réforme de la gouvernance d’entreprise soit mise en place, non pour contrer l’activisme mais pour réformer le conseil d’administration et lui donner un rôle nouveau `s’assurer de la crédibilité de la haute direction.
It’s the attack of hedge funds, shareholder activists looking for short term gain even at the expense of investments that would produce higher returns over the long run, and, along the way, would lead to employment gains and then wage gains. What follows, then, is a prescription for changes in tax policy and legal rules that would hamper the activists, all to promote the “long run.” But this is a misdiagnosis, which fails to realize that the shareholders activists’ success reveals a major shortfall in corporate governance for large public corporations.
(…) Reform should move not in the direction of closing down the activists who are bringing the news about this design flaw. Rather we should develop a new role for the board: credibly evaluating and then verifying that management’s strategy is best for the company (or making changes if it is not). Boards need directors who will have that credibility, which is won through deep knowledge about the company and its industry and an appropriate time commitment.
À la prochaine…
Ivan Tchotourian
état actionnaire mission et composition du conseil d'administration Nouvelles diverses rémunération
Rémunération de PSA : les administrateurs de l’État contestent
Ivan Tchotourian 28 mars 2016
Bonjour à toutes et à tous, voilà le retour de l’État actionnaire en France ! Les journalistes Maxime Amiot et Julien Dupont-Calbo de Les Échos.fr aborde cette thématique autour de l’exemple du fabriquant français de voitures Peugeot : « PSA : l’Etat conteste la rémunération de Tavares ».
Le sujet n’a pas fini de faire parler. Dans le sillage du retour en grâce de PSA, les revenus de son président du directoire ont quasiment doublé en un an, à 5,24 millions en 2015. Et selon nos informations, les deux représentants de l’Etat, premier actionnaire du constructeur aux côtés de la famille Peugeot et de Dongfeng, ont voté contre ce niveau de rétribution. L’exécutif recommande en effet, dans les entreprises où il dispose d’une participation minoritaire, « une baisse de 30 % de la rémunération du dirigeant », rappelle-t-on à Bercy.
À la prochaine…
Ivan Tchotourian
engagement et activisme actionnarial mission et composition du conseil d'administration
Les investisseurs se préoccupent-ils de la féminisation des CA ?
Ivan Tchotourian 26 mars 2016
Bonjour à toutes et à tous, en voilà une question ? Vous allez me répondre « oui » sans hésiter, mais rien n’est moins sûr au vu d’un récent article de The Street (Emily Stewart, « Institutional Investors Don’t Seem to Care About Women on Corporate Boards – But They Should »). On peut y lire :
Numerous studies suggest that the presence of women in corporate leadership positions correlates with improved firm performance, and yet, it appears to be something that really isn’t a concern for major investors: hedge funds, endowment, activists, global investment management firms and others.
(…) But most institutional investors just don’t want to talk about women in the boardroom. They don’t see it as part of their mandate.
À la prochaine…
Ivan Tchotourian
